Christopher McKinney Citizen Kane Blog Post

What many movies filmed in the 1940’s lacked, Citizen Kane revolutionized and brought to the center stage of the film industry. Total immersion is what many directors strive for when filming nowadays; looking to create an environment that pulls the audience in to make them feel a part of the story, and immersed within the environment of a scene. Of course in 1940 during the production of Citizen Kane the technology used for filming movies, especially on Warner Brother sets were cumbersome and not easily manipulated for aesthetic purposes. In my experience with movies of the early 20th century the staging of many scenes, usually throughout the entire movie is something similar to a common day sit-com. Cameras set up in fixed positions, one or two points of entry or exit for characters, and very little depth of field; simple screenplay. The creativity and technical abilities of Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles made one of the first films to truly create detailed, engaging and visually pleasing environments when filming Citizen Kane.

There are many big scenes that take place during Citizen Kane. From the political rally to the opera house, and Xanadu the director never failed to create seemingly large and immersive scenes. Though these were the bigger and better scenes of the movie, my attention was grabbed by one of the first moments of the movie, when Kane’s parents are signing his transfer papers to his boarding school. We see Kane’s parents and Walter Thatcher speaking in the living room, while Welles’ use of deep focus keeps young Charles Foster Kane in clear view from inside the house. As the scene progressed further into the house, more of their location and surroundings are revealed, giving the audience a greater sense of the environment and where the scene is taking place. Something like this nowadays is not often recognized as cameras and the technology used is much easier to maneuver around a set, giving directors the opportunity to get the angles and shots they want with ease. The technical restrictions that were overcome and creative uses of the technology on hand by Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz are a testament to the successful reception of Citizen Kane by audience members and viewers alike.

Citizen Kane Deep Focus

          Citizen Kane is one of the most famous movies for many reasons, one of the reasons being from the films use of deep focus. Deep focus means that everything in the shot (both foreground and background) is in focus at the same time. This can have many different effects on the people watching the film. The first example of deep focus in Citizen Kane is in the beginning of the movie, when Kane’s mother is signing the paper and he is outside sledding. The purpose of deep focus here is to let the audience choose where they want to look, instead of blurring out part of the frame and focusing in on one part. Even though the eyes of the audience are free to look wherever they’d like, Welles pushes them towards looking at the mother by having the other 2 characters in the foreground looking at her also. There is little movement in the foreground, and in the background Kane is running around a lot, which also directs our attention towards him. The fact that our attention is focused on the mother signing the paper and Kane in the back shows what is happening in the scene; the mother is “signing away” the control of Kane’s life to another person. This is the start of the deep focus being used whenever control is being seen during the film. The deep focus makes the most sense to be used when it is showing Kane’s loss of control, because it is not just focusing on him and leaving everyone else blurred out. It shows the whole space that Kane has lost power over, or never had it to begin with.

Kane high/low angle shots

The most interesting technical aspect of Citizen Kane, was the use of high, low, and medium angle shots. It is fascinating how frequently these shots were used, and when each type of shot was used. As the movie progressed, the camera angle began to digress. What was once a high angle shot at the beginning of the film when Kane was young and giving his speech, later transformed and ended with his low angle shot shown while he was speaking down to what was his second wife at the time. The low angle shot, used to display power and exaggerate magnitude, did so with Charles Foster Kane. As Kane became older and more materialistic, he began to put things he once loved to the side. After gaining such power, he became bored and greedy; this is shown in his attempt to create an opera singer out of his wife by building an opera house for her. After his greed and boredom became more transparent, the camera shot transitioned to more use of a low angle, to create the feeling and appearance that Kane is talking down to whoever. Towards the end of the film the camera continuously stays at a low angle shot to exaggerate Kane’s anger and frustration. However what I found most interesting was the rosebud scene. While this is the beginning scene in the film, it is really what completes the film. The final scene allows the audience to understand the meaning of the word “rosebud”. When Kane is in his final moments and says “rosebud”, the camera angle is a normal, medium, steady shot on only his mouth. By doing this, the director was successfully able depict Kane for who he truly was before the fame and fortune. The scene is almost a realization by Kane of what truly mattered to him and he was able to finally understand that he did not need his reputation and prosperity to be happy. The medium shot shows a rare calm and content Kane. Something the audience does not see throughput the film.

Citizen Kane: Low Angles

Tova Byrne

Citizen Kane - Low Angles

There is so, so much to discuss in regards to Citizen Kane. It is a very technical film, and each technique used is done so with thought and purpose. Basically, the sheer volume of notes I took about technical things is embarrassing. However, I found that one of the most prominent techniques in this film was Welles’ use of high and low angles to aggrandize Kane and portray status between characters. At the beginning of the film, low angles are slightly less frequent, as Kane is closer to the same level as his peers. However, when it is decided that Kane is to be taken with Thatcher, Thatcher is shot from a low angle looming over Kane as a child, and Kane is shot from a high angle of Thatcher over him. Their statuses changes quickly as the film progresses, and soon all of those high angle shots of Kane over Thatcher’s shoulder and low angles of Thatcher sitting in a colossal chair over his desk sink to eye level; they then lower as Kane begins to tower over him as he develops into the hugely famous and powerful man that the viewer knows he becomes. Kane proceeds to be shot from a low angle many times throughout the rest of the film to heighten the sense of his power and arrogance. There are countless instances: Leland and Kane standing on either side of Mr. Carter, the wildly stuttering original editor of the Inquirer, Kane standing and talking over Leland and Bernstein as they sit, almost below him, the crazy low angle of Leland and Kane as they pace the empty shell of the Inquirer headquarters. But perhaps one of the other most important uses of this technique is showed during his relationship with his second wife, Susan. It is a relationship built on false pretenses and one that marks the turning point of Kane’s rise and fall, and Susan represents Kane’s lost innocence and fall from grace. After the Inquirer’s scathing review of her debut, Susan sits on the floor as Kane stands over her and his shadow falls over her. Later, Susan again sits on the ground almost at Kane’s feet as he sits in his chair, begging her to keep her voice down. When she leaves, however, the placement of the shot and the level of the characters is much more eye to eye. From the final low angle, he throws a tantrum in a wild fit of rage and arrogance, and the room–along with his life–comes crashing down around him.

Camilla Broccolo Citizen Kane review

To be completely honest, when I heard that this movie was considered the best movie of its time, I was expecting something much more captivating.  However, I do see how the techniques used in this movie could have been the best of its time.  One scene that really stuck out to me was when Susan was dying from the drug overdose. I thought that their technique of having the medicine in the front, and Kane and the doorway in the back in focus, but Susan not in focus was an interesting way to show what would happen in the following scenes.  It foreshadowed Susan leaving Kane by putting her in  dark, not in focus.  I think the only way they could have possibly achieved this was by putting together the film rolls to make one scene.  Other than this scene, through the entire movie, there was a lot of use of camera angles to show power or importance of a character. Another thing that I found interesting in this movie was how they used the beginning scene of the movie as the ending scene.  I think this was used to tell the audience at the beginning of the movie that the story they were about to hear was very dark and sinister, using it at the end of the movie could have shown that what they just heard was true and secret.  Finally, my interpretation of rosebud was Kane’s lost childhood.  At the beginning of the movie, he was ripped away from him sledding peacefully and having fun as a child and taken to a boarding school where he was supposed to mature right away.  Then at the end of the movie, that same sled with the word “rosebud” burned in the fire, melting away the painted letters.  I interpreted this as the loss of his innocence, and how even when he tried, he couldn’t get it back because his exaggerated life would get in the way.  

Will Mennie

Bauks

Film Analysis

2/27/13

Shadows of Citizen Kane

      While watching the well-known classic, Citizen Kane, the inventive use of shadows was used to create the perfect feel in each scene. Unlike in Casablanca, where shadows were used as simpler plot devices, Citizen Kane used them to convey a deeper meaning. As shadows are nothing more than a lack of light, Orson Wells was able to use shadows to display a lack of something else. For example, in one of the later scenes in which Kane and Susan are arguing, and right when Kane’s shadow swallows her entire figure, she stops fighting. It was as if he took away her power/authority to bitch at him just by casting a shadow over her. Another example would be any scene with The Reporters. I capitalize that because in the film, the reporters seem to act as a single character. Anyway, The Reporters are unified by one feature – none of them have distinct faces, just ominous shadows cast by their fedoras. In the beginning of the film, I figured this meant that they were shady a character, or would somehow play the antagonist, however the only significance it seemed to have was just to express their lack of individuality.

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane

One aspect that I found important while viewing Citizen Kane was the dominance the director layed on Kane’s character. The director did this in many forms. But I will only cover how he utilized many focuses on his character as well as angles. The importance on Kane was high from the beginning of the film as the first seen was him on his death bed, laying in the dark creating a mysterious scene that left the audience curious for more, especially with the last word “rosebud” that rolled off his tongue. From that point on it was a scavenge to figure out the significance of ‘rosebud’ and Kane’s life. With the flashback from Kane’s diary as he was a child being shipped off to New York, Kane never failed to leave the view of the camera, always in focus whether it be the foreground or background, he was there. Kane, situated between individuals, can be seen far throughout the window. As he grew older, his character grew a large dominance in society, most all angles are from looking up at him or him looking down on people. The director made sure the his superiority ruled all. Even when Kane himself wasn’t the main focus of the shot his presence was, in the scene when the investigator went to Bernstein’s ( I think) office his mural hung high above the men. And as Kane left scenes he always fell into interesting perspectives so he never actually left the shot, for example, one of the last scenes of the move after his wife left him and he trashed the room, Kane walked out and down the hall, and although the camera was still pointing at the door, Kane left the scene by a reflection in the mirror of him walking away down the hall. All in all the intricacy of the importance of Kane’s superiority in this film is rather extraordinary, as Kane, of course, is the head honcho.

Welles Innovative Techniques

Orson Welles Techniques

The film Citizen Kane written, directed, and produced by, Orson Welles introduces new techniques to film such as deep space with tracking camera and a sense of epic scale. Welles shows Charles Kane’s wealth with shots that depicted his elaborate estate Xanadu. Within Kane’s mansion Welles shows the scale of the place by using large tracking shots to show how much stuff Kane has purchased. An example of this is when Welles shows all Kane’s statues and various artifacts he purchased throughout his life at the end of the movie. All these shots show that Kane’s world is massive but empty. Kane is mogul emperor and lusts for power, he wants people to envy him and his life. In the scene at the the opera house Kane forces his wife Susan to sing Opera, at the end of the scene he is the only one clapping and this is shown at a low angle shot to exaggerate his presence. Kane wants others to love Susan and be jealous of him and his success. This shows that Kane is truly empty, he feels that everyone should love and respect him. One of the most important shots in the whole movie is when Kane is a child and his mother wants to send him away to boarding school. Wells uses deep space with tracking camera to show Kane in the back playing with his sled while his parents are discussing his future. This shot is revolutionary in cinema, but also shows that the last time Kane genuinely felt anything was when he was playing with his sled Rosebud. Orson Welles was able to create a complex character with innovative use of new camera techniques such as deep focus and tracking shots.

Kane and Xanadu

In Citizen Kane, I found the use of the intro shot and final shot both very interesting. In the beginning of the movie, it starts with a dissolving shot of the fence in hard focus. This then leads to the slower progressing of getting closer and closer to the window in Xanadu. These slow dissolving shots really show off the scale of the place well. Watching this scene as we got closer and closer to the window, gave me dark feelings about this place. Initially you don’t know why it has become such a place but as we get further and further into the movie, we learn that it has become a hive for material things. There is nothing inside that Kane has that is sentimental, except for Rosebud which he can’t even find because the place is cluttered with useless things. Everything bad in this movie has led to the point were Kane builds this massive estate. It has become the crowning jewel of the wealth that has ruined his life. It the last few scenes of the movie, we see the workers beginning to burn all the worthless and broken objects they could find. The eventually burn Rosebud the sled marking the end of him and any memory of his past. After this we once again get a shot of the gate and the “No Trespassing” signs on the fence. This final shot of the crowning jewel of Kane’s wealth shows us how his money led to his terrible fate.

Groundbreaking Cinematography in El Ranchero

During the first sequence of the interview of Susan Alexander in El Ranchero, Welles uses extremely impressive camerawork and editing to create a cohesive transition between exterior establishment and interior dialogue. The shot starts with a flash of lighting to give a motive for cutting from the previous scene. Cutting on a flash of lighting works because there is both a visual and audio motive: a bright flash and a loud crash. The shot starts on a shot of an illustration of Susan Alexander on the side of the building and pedestals up to the blinking sign reading “El Rancho.”  Here, a lesser-gifted filmmaker would have cut directly from the exterior establishing shot to the interior of El Rancho during another lighting flash. Instead, Welles performs an incredible feat: the camera dollies in through the sign, tilts down and moves through the glass of a skylight into the building, where it tilts back up and dollies forward as it pedestals down to eye level.

From a technical standpoint, this shot is astoundingly well done. Today, filmmakers might use computer-generated imagery to perform a similar shot and not have it look as good as it does in this film. The IMDB page for this film says that a collapsible sign was built that could be split in two to allow the camera to pass through. To transition through the glass, the sequence must have been taken in two shots with one ending just above the glass and one one beginning in the same spot with the glass removed. A well-timed dissolve makes it seem that the camera moves through the window. 

The shot was not technically impressive for the sake of being just that. Having such a shot is also very important in setting the mood of the scene. Long, continuous shots are very important throughout the film. Wells generally tries to use cuts as little as possible, and this scene is no exception. The use of long takes throughout the film is contrary to conventional filmmaking, in which cuts often occur within around seven seconds of each other. These long takes have the benefit of displaying a realistic and human presentation. Because the camera doesn’t instantaneously change positions, which is impossible for people to do, it gives the effect that the audience is in the same room in which the acting is occurring. Cutting in between an establishing shot and an interior shot would diminish the effect greatly. Instead, the long take at the beginning of the “El Ranchero” sequence, which continues without cutting far longer once the dialogue begins, continues this effect used throughout the film.

The first "El Rancho" shot is very impressive, but it is also overused. The shot is reused a few times later in the film, albeit truncated and  possibly reversed, whenever the the the film enters or exits this building. Using it more than once detracts from the film as it becomes repetitive and disorienting. Perhaps Wells used the shot more than once because he was less concerned with multiple uses’ detrimental effect than he was proud of executing this complex and beautiful camerawork and editing expertly well.

Citizen Kane Breakfast Montage

The breakfast montage scene in Citizen Kane was rich in story telling. Just the mornings that Kane and his wife experienced, exposes so much of their true feelings, and how their feelings evolve throughout the relationship. The first sequence Charles keeps interrupting his new wife Emily, by telling her, she’s beautiful, and how much fun they had the night before. The topics of the morning start becoming more serious and the conversation start to become more aggressive, as they continuously attack each other. One thing that keeps changing is their wardrobe. The wardrobe starts off as very casual and then becomes quite formal as they start feeling less open towards each other. Through out the breakfast sequence Emily starts becoming green with jealous rage when Charles spends more, and more time at the newspaper working on the Inquire. The ending sequence is probably the most important, and the most revealing of their relationship out of all of them. It shows a close up of Emily reading the Chronicle, and then it shows a close up of Kane reading the Inquire, which are the two rivalry papers, which also symbolizes the rivalry in their relationship. In the beginning they had started sitting in very close proximity to each other, and as these sequences drag on, the table starts becoming longer and longer, quite literally symbolizing a space in-between them, and shows them growing apart.

Citizen Kane: Breakfast Montage Scene

Noella Robb
2/26/14

One of the most interesting scenes in the Orson Welles film, Citizen Kane, is the famous breakfast montage. It is clearly used to show the development of Kane and Emily's relationship through the passage of time, but the artistic and unusual way Welles chooses to show this gives reason for the scene to be such a famous, well-known one.

The idea of showing the Kane's relationship simply through a series of moments at a breakfast table is ingenious in itself. It manages to show the ups and downs of a complex relationship and personal changes by showing how the couple simply interact with each other at the start of their day. Ranging from subtle to blatant, the differences between the sequential breakfast moments are quick. In the beginning, both characters are quite loose and happy as they partake in their breakfast (or dinner, the time is somewhat unclear), and they are seated quite close to each other. The subtleties are found in the way they are dressed, and the objects on their breakfast table. Their clothing is loose and casual, and the objects are a series of simple tea sets, representing how informal, happy, and new the relationship is. Even the music is light and cheerful in the background.

As the montage progresses, the music gets more intense. The clothing that both characters wear become more and more restrictive, until they finally dress in formal wear even at the breakfast table. The tableware becomes more and more elaborate, and bigger objects sit between them at the table. And the most obvious of differences is that at the very end, Emily is seated at the other side of the table and both cease to make conversation, blatantly representing that they are distant towards each other, and that there is now little to no love between them.

The famous breakfast montage is a memorable scene in Citizen Kane, because it's seamless transitions, subtle and overt changes of mood and props, and changes of music make for the simple telling of a story of a "marriage just like any other marriage" to be something much more interesting to watch than it sounds.

Joey Schulman

Film

Bauks

February 30, 2014

            Citizen Kane was one for the ages. Now I know why every movie and tv show makes some reference to Citizen Kane; it’s because this movie was spectacular. The movie used different cinematography to capture different themes, ideas, and much more throughout Kane’s life. Right from the beginning of the movie, we saw the use of shadows when the article writers were discussing Kane’s death and how to put it in the paper. The effect of blacking out all of their faces was to show that it didn’t matter who those men were because there were so many articles being written and published about Kane, so the writers do not matter in the movie. We saw the use of flashbacks in the Civil War scene with Kane and his parents in Colorado. In this scene we heard Charles in the background, while at the same time there is a civil war going on inside the house with Mrs. Kane, Mr. Kane, and Fatcher. Throughout this scene, we always saw Charles, and he was always is focus because he was being spoken about by his parents and Fatcher. Throughout the film we saw other examples of different cinematography genius. There was the use of high angle to show that Kane was more important than his wife. This showed that Kane was not going to listen to his wife. He was going to do things his way because he is more powerful. When his wife looked horrible on the bed in the “sick scene” towards the end of the movie, the girl is out of focus, but it seemed as if she was being sandwiched by two things that were in focus. One being drugs to show that she is messed up and sick, and the other being Kane because he is important and cares about his wife on the bed. Overall, an amazing film due to the different cinematography used.