Blast from the Past! | Citizen Kane
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Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes
Can a movie really tell you what you want to know?
Citizen Kane was co-written, directed, and starred Orson Welles. Before entering the movie business, Welles had come from a radio and broadway background. Got his initial fame from the radio spoof of “The War of the Worlds” based on H. G. Wells book.
Welles was 25 years old when he made Citizen Kane. When he came to Hollywood, he was already well known because of his radio career. He was given a choice of contracts and could make what ever movie he wanted to. He was known as playful spirit. He stated that Hollywood is the biggest toy train set ever.
You can just imagine him coming to the studios and thinking “How can I have fun with this?”
Citizen Kane is about the psychological life of an individual. The movie some say is was based on the life of William Randolf Hearst. Hearst certainly thought so and banned his newspaper conglomerate from writing any reviews or responses to it. Although Welles was known as one of the best directors of all time, and Citizen Kane was known as one of the best movies of all time, it was a box office failure. Perhaps this is due to Hearst’s response…perhaps not.
Welles turned classical filmmaking upside down with this film. Broke away from D. W. Griffith’s tradition of analytical editing. His film was nonlinear in terms of chronology, made up of flashbacks from many different points of view. He used a lot of expressionist devices, and itself was in a way a reflexive film.
If you learn about Orson Welles you will notice that the character Charles Foster Kane in a way mirrors his own life in a way. He probably saw himself in the character. Read about Welles and Citizen Kain in Wikipedia (links above) to see what I mean.
Gregg Toland worked with Welles as his cinematographer on this film. One thing that was different and innovative in a way was the depth of field style. The focus of the background, foreground, middle ground is the same. Welles (unlike Hitchcock) did not use editing as primary means of style. He puts most of his attention on the camera movement and placement. Take the opening sequence of Touch of Evil for example. With Welles the camera seems to have a mind of its own. It doesn’t necessarily follow the characters. People enter a room via a door. The camera enters the room via a window or skylight.
If you pay attention to the opening sequence of the movie you will notice a few things. One is that the people are all dark, making them appear shady and mysterious. They show a film reel about Kane and then say, “This tells us what he did, but not what we want to know. Who is Charles foster Kane?” What do they want to know? Then a discussion starts about Kane’s last words before death, and it appears as though they are looking for some sort of scandal. This makes you question the ethics of those people.
One final thing comes up for me is the whole argument in filming: editing vs. camera. Hitchcock was all about editing. Welles is all about camera. Which one to master? I guess it depends on what one is most comfortable with.
