Introduction to 'Citizen Kane' and Its Cinematic Significance
The evolution of film is a slow process, where usually, a work will break a record, every now and then, and act as a milestone for the progress of cinema and the development of its complexity. Each spark of ingenuity, and experimentation pushes the form a little further, and occasionally, a film will emerge so packed with new ideas and revolution, that the evolution of cinema itself seems to skip a decade overnight.
With the overall ambivalence of its tone, we can concur that ‘Citizen Kane’ is a film about one of the wealthiest men in the world, and yet permeating the entire film is the gloom of failure. He's an idealist standing by the rights of the vulnerable, and yet we see him compromise these ideals constantly in his personal life. It’s about love, and friendships in a great man’s life, and how his greatness strain these relationships until no love remains. We as the audience were given the facts of his life, and left to derive our own conclusion, regardless of how we feel about him, which is very likely to change as the film goes on. After the death of the prominent editor reporters begin to try to unravel his last words, ‘Rosebud’. And to get us from point A to B, the film takes us through a labyrinth of flashbacks and points of view, series of incomplete, subjective, and even contradictory views on this man’s life from the people who surrounded him and were close to him.
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Orson Welles' Vision: Merging Storytelling and Cinematic Techniques
Loss of childhood, storytelling from memory, and the complications of power and wealth in one’s life all seem to be the key themes that the film ‘Citizen Kane’ by American producer, director, writer, and actor Orson Welles, and cinematographer Gregg Toland presented, with an altogether vast impact on film that we still see to this day. Their techniques, the reasons behind them, and the impacts of them will be discussed and analyzed in this essay.
The impact of ‘Citizens Kane’ impact on cinema were profound; its techniques became so used that what once was so unique, seems like a standard norm seen in abundance in film nowadays. Welles added not only wittingly used techniques, but also brought a philosophical depth to his film by merging the tone/mood/point of the plot with visual techniques to support his storyline. This will also be analyzed with references below.
It is an indisputable fact that their combined efforts helped create one of the most visually rich and engaging films made up until that point in time, where both of their technical genius and vision were combined to produce such a powerful film with philosophical depth and reasoning behind every technique.
Deep focus, for example, is a technique where everything in frame is in focus. We see through history that filmmakers used different focal lenses to separate the character from the background, or to draw the audience’s attention to a particular detail or message, whereas Welles had the whole scene, in long shot that captured everyone and everything in crisp focus, was accomplished by using a small aperture, the smaller it is, the more could be focused at one time. But this was previously used by Toland in earlier films, but was used in great significance in ‘Citizen Kane’, accompanied by lengthy takes, to cater to the audience’s comprehension of the full work; the bigger picture rather than focusing on parts of the frames to restrict attention to only one character or aspect. One example would be when Charles Foster Kane at his lowest point, both aging and feeling abandoned, was standing next to a mirror, in a hall of mirrors, serving a beautiful illustration of his broken soul, and of elements that are far beyond ‘his control’ in his life. It can also be argued that this technique served in that scene as a nothing less of a genius antidote to the idea that one’s long life can be summed up by a single word or ‘frame’.
Innovative Techniques: Deep Focus and Spacing in 'Citizen Kane
Deep spacing, another cinematic technique (part of mise-en-scene, or object placement), was used in the placement of both objects and characters. Contrary to shallow spacing where the space between objects is little, deep spacing allowed for placement of characters to be farther away from each other, but still with the same deep focus. This was used to describe either power relationships between characters, or to describe the significance of each role, and each message the character is sending across to the audience. The use of extreme low angled shots was also utilized in cinema earlier, but it was Welles and Toland’s utilization of all these techniques as well as other innovations of their own mind that turned this work to be so groundbreaking.
Toland used similar techniques one year prior in the long voyage home, but it was Welles’ application of this technique that allowed for something new. The construction of the technique allowed the audience to see the whole picture as one would see a work of art at a museum, everything is there for the audience to see, and each prop, piece of furniture, or even background characters add something to the scene, ultimately affecting mood and atmosphere. An example from the film would be when in the foreground right we see a business, like Mrs. Kane who is arranging paperwork for her son to go into the custody of Mr. Thatcher for a better quality of life and education for the then young Kane, while the father is in the middle left of the frame, literally and metaphorically placed ‘in opposition’ to Thatcher and Mrs. Kane, who were both on the ‘same side’, foreground right. Little Charles’ father was initially fighting to keep his son, yet eventually we see him give in to his greed. Kane being in the background, still in focus, shows us a full image of how his fate is being decided for him while he is oblivious; playing in the snow just outside. Again, this clarity in the foreground, middle, and background, illustrates a power struggle, the mother and thatcher hold power and are in the foreground, the helpless father still trying to influence the situation stuck in the middle left, and young Kane in the back and center, as he is still ‘central’ in the conversation, yet seemingly entrapped by the window frame, oblivious to his situation, maybe a symbol on how his life at that moment resembled a little box he’s trapped in with bigger people choosing his fate for him.
A more traditional film at the time would have probably changed in focus and done with jump-cuts between those three elements. But this film seemed to have combined them so we can perceive more than one element in the unison of the very same frame, making the film all the more powerful, as images that complement the plot tend to be engraved in a clearer image in the viewer’s mind. This heightening of the audience’s ability to see every detail gave filmmakers a new concise way of presenting complex ideas or relationships using framing and blocking alone!
Other than deep focus and spacing, the use of roving, floating cameras that seemed to move through objects that gives an almost godlike surreal view of events. This accompanied by, for example, the frequent use of extreme closeups, created a complexity that gives the audience a deeper understanding of events. For example, while introducing Kane's second wife, we initially see a face illuminated by lightning (later revealed to be Susan Kane), a night-club singer at the El Rancho, then a subtle dissolve helps the camera pass through a plane of glass, and the night-club sign, and then to Susan who sits alone drunk and distraught. In this short time, we already know who she is, what she does, and how her husband’s death has wounded her. Use of closeups in particular is to isolate and amplify expressions, whether it be Kane’s last words that open the film ‘Rosebud’, superimposed with the snow globe Kane holds in his hand, later revealed to symbolize a simpler time in the snow, or when used in a montage to condense the growing strain of 16-year -long marriage in a short scene, with close ups on the faces of Kane and his wife, and transitions to take us from one scene to the next without breaking dramatic tension, also using superimposition which layered images on images to project a character's mental state into the real world.
Visual Storytelling: The Use of Camera Angles and Movement
The use of low angle shots that reveal ceiling, is a technique used by Welles also to influence how audience reads the scene, emphasizes the importance of a character, and or power dynamic in a relationship, and supports the storyline’s message to be delivered even stronger. An example is when Kane takes control of his destiny, in his political speech that is shot from below, showing a literally larger than life Kane. As the camera moves, it could easily be argued that Charles Foster Kane literally grows in size as his ego grows to reach its peak. On the contrary, this same sentiment and camera movement is reversed when we see a young Kane slowly becoming isolated in the frame, as we zoom out into his parents signing him off out of the family home. The zoom out from a higher than eye level angle on Kane symbolizes the insignificance of his opinion and choices, while the zoom in, from an extremely low angle, symbolizes the opposite, a loud and clear Kane taking control of his own life. This visual storytelling through camera movement would become a staple in cinema, borrowed by all kinds of filmmakers everywhere, though the full list of tricks that they brought to the world of cinema may not have been wholly original, the effect and implementation pushed them into the forefront of mainstream American cinema nonetheless.
Chiaroscuro Effect and Its Impact on Mood and Characterization
The ‘Chiaroscuro effect’ brought forth by Toland in American cinema is a term originally used to describe the treatment of light and shade namely used in the expressionist cinema of the Weimar republic at the time, but it's cleverly used in ‘Citizen Kane’ to highlight the emotional states and moods the characters give off, and would also act as a direct influence on film noir that would emerge a few years later. A great example in the movie is the establishment of mystery by shrouding the journalists/detectives in secrecy too, with investigator Thompson for example always shown from behind or in silhouette, adding both an air of darkness and mystery to the scene, altogether affecting the mood and atmosphere in a way where the plot and characters stand out even more to the viewer. Another example is showing visual lighting contrast in the adult Charles Kane, symbolizing a contrast in his torn identity, and the problems he faces being a wealthy man who comes from a far simpler background. The chiaroscuro effect in this case is used to highlight the inner struggle within the mind character, and could arguably show the external shell of the character to other characters. They view him as nothing less than a maze, or a mystery. Each character having a subjective view of who Kane is.
Every little trick, dramatic low-angle, and camera movement were there for reasons of driving story forward and allowing us to see the mind of the character more clearly. If these complex visuals didn't work to serve that story and push it further, it would be wasted for just appearances, but the usage of it with reason, was what made the film ‘a masterpiece of its time’ which is what its known to be described as. We can comfortably say that Welles changed the approach of how to tell a story at his time.
The film was told through multiple perspectives, the first we take on is that of a typical Hollywood film at that time, an omnipotent observer that glides through the window of the mansion to hear his last words. The artificiality of this perspective was compounded by the use of the superimposed snow immediately after his death. We are also given the perspective of the news camera that lists every major event of his life, which foreshadows every major plot point we are about to view in the film. It is not necessarily about those events taking place, it’s about why they took place, and what were their effects on Kane, but also those around him, what shaped him was revealed by flashbacks by series of 5 people who knew the most about Kane. Each character revealed a piece of the puzzle that shaped the person he was as he got older. This radical approach to storytelling shattered the expectations of more linear narrative audiences at the time, acting as yet another unique technique that paved the way for films later on and until today. Its fragmented nature forces us as audience to pick up the pieces are put in a way that allows us to put these pieces, however we want after watching it and draw our own conclusion, especially because the flashbacks were so subjective.
In the end, Thompson points out that he and the reporters have failed to know what the word ‘Rosebud’ meant, as he said “I don't think any words can explain a man’s life, though I think ‘Rosebud’ is just a piece of the jigsaw puzzle, a missing piece”. We then return to the same omnipotent perspective that we began with in the opening of the film, emphasizing his legacy, belonging, and wealth, where the camera finally pans through to reveal to the audience only what the word ‘Rosebud’ meant all this time, it was the name of his childhood sleigh!
Conclusion: The Legacy of 'Citizen Kane' in Modern Cinema
This gives the movie two endings so to say, an ending for the characters, still oblivious to what ‘Rosebud’ actually meant, and the other being to the audience, where they found out where it came from, but maybe not definitively what it meant. Orson Welles presents a hollow ending to this complex film. While ‘Rosebud’ is interpreted numerous times as different meanings; as Kane’s last words, the film’s narrative structure, and one of the two leading interpretations of the film, whether the ending is satisfying is eventually up to whether the viewer believes the reveal of ‘Rosebud’ as Kane’s childhood sleigh ‘solves’ the ‘narrative’ of ‘Citizen Kane’ or not. If the viewer interprets the film holistically and without the intention of interpreting Kane’s life, ‘Rosebud’ would ultimately act as an artificial conclusion that can only be made by the audience based on the narrative structure of the film. The narrative structure of ‘Citizen Kane’ denies the viewer a definitive answer to what the audience believes to be the objective of the film; as the film and audience violate the rights of its characters and assume at its core ‘Citizen Kane’ is about finding a singular, definitive answer to explain the motivations and life of Charles Foster Kane, which cannot be applied since we see that Kane is a multidimensional character, and cannot be defined in one word, as Thompson finally states. While I agree with Thompson and the ending that him and the rest of the characters were presented with, I still believe that the ending the audience was presented with, where we found the origin of the word ‘Rosebud’, still serves as a satisfactory ending, as it gets the audience to actively think of all the reasons he could have remembered his childhood at the time of his death; whether it be nostalgia, regret of giving up simplicity, or his own struggle with the many troubles that came with his success and wealth.
For a man of Kane’s success and wealth, who has seen so much and overcome so many obstacles in his life, it almost seems as if uttering the name of his childhood sleigh as his last word is metaphoric, radiating a deep tone of nostalgia, sadness, and longing; perhaps a longing to what he truly desired all these years, a purer, simpler, cleaner time. A more innocent time where he was but a child, enjoying his sleigh in the snow, before the punches, life threw at him, polluted that, inside and out.
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