"Citizen Kane" is a 1941 American drama film produced and directed by the infamous Orson Welles. The picture was Welles's first feature film; and to many fans, it is considered to be the greatest film ever made. Obviously, that is completely subjective.
But, I do admit the film has a spot on my favorite films of all time, amongst classic Stanley Kubrick films. "A Clockwork Orange" holds a special place in my heart if I may add. I digress.
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| Theatrical release poster by William Rose |
The quasi-biographical film examines the life of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles. And if you've kept up with my posts on William Randolph Hearst, you'd know that "Citizen Kane" follows the life of Hearst. Upon its release, Hearst prohibited mention of the film in any of his newspapers. Tough crowd.
Overall, I find it hard to argue that "Citizen Kane" is a bad motion picture. Considering the fact that Welles never had any prior motion picture experience, the film really lives up to the hype. It's great in the manner of its storytelling, the acting and its photographic accomplishments. The film was a few steps of anything that had been made in films prior.
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| William Randolph Hearst is actually only mentioned one time in "Citizen Kane." Image retrieved from Hollywood Reporter |
Upon doing my own research, many individuals don't give credit to the fact that this film was brought to the screen on a low budget, just under $800,000. Major motion pictures today spend exponentially more than that.
I also found it particularly fascinating how Welles dispenses with the idea of a single storyteller. Instead, Welles implements multiples narrators to recount Kane's life and uses each narrator to recount a different part of his life.
As someone who is heavily fascinated with cinematography, the most innovative technical aspect of "Citizen Kane" is the use of deep focus. By definition, "deep focus" is where the foreground, background and everything in between is all in sharp focus. Cinematographer Gregg Toland was able to accomplish this with his experimentation with lenses and lighting.
As someone who is heavily fascinated with cinematography, the most innovative technical aspect of "Citizen Kane" is the use of deep focus. By definition, "deep focus" is where the foreground, background and everything in between is all in sharp focus. Cinematographer Gregg Toland was able to accomplish this with his experimentation with lenses and lighting.
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| Welles and Toland prepare to film a shot from an extremely low angle that required cutting into the set floor. Photo retrieved from CineD |
Another unprecedented method used in the film was the low-angle shots facing upwards, thus allowing ceilings to be shown in the background of the scene. Fun fact: every set was built with a ceiling, which broke studio conventions of the time period.
Below is a video of a scene from "Citizen Kane" shot from a low-angle.
According to Welles, he believed that it was "bad theatrical convention to pretend that there was no ceiling." To be honest, I agree. I would rather the film set look as believable and real as possible.
Welles's experimentation with sound in "Citizen Kane" also gave him well-deserved recognition. Welles used techniques from radio such as overlapping dialogue. The party scene in the video below, in which the characters sing "Oh, Mr. Kane," features this technique.
Below features the marriage montage scene from "Citizen Kane" that implements the above sound technique.
Since the Hearst press refused to carry ads or reviews for the film, "Citizen Kane" did make its box office potential. Welles reportedly lost somewhere around $150,000 because of Hearst's dislike towards the film, which is a shame because some journalists put Welles in the same category as Charles Chaplin and D.W. Griffith.
There's no doubt that "Citizen Kane" was far ahead of its time. But you'll have to find out for yourself if you haven't seen the film.
Stream "Citizen Kane" on HBO Max, Amazon Prime, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play or Apple TV.
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