Citizen Kane Analysis Records

Cordie 2022-04-19 09:01:11

Black and white movies are really hard to focus on to the end, and personally, without analyzing it from a technical point of view, this movie has very little appeal to me.

1. From the perspective of narrative structure, the film interjects Kane's life events through five flashbacks on the main line of the reporter's investigation of the meaning of "Rosebud". Five relatives and friends showed a certain side of Kane, thus piecing together a complex and multi-faceted character. Each observation perspective is subjective, making the character more three-dimensional and vivid.

2. The film uses a large number of depth-of-field shots, which enriches the amount of information in the picture, making the audience more actively thinking and participating in the scene scheduling. Like little Kane playing outside the window, Mrs. Kane signs a contract with Saicher. The two dominate the lower right of the frame, with Kane's father making a faint protest in the upper left of the frame, and little Kane playing in the snow outside the rear view window. Director Wells tends to separate his actors in the foreground and background spaces, thereby isolating Mr. Kane emotionally from those around him. For example, near the end of the film, Kane and Susan are arranged to have a dialogue at opposite ends of a huge room, and at this time the relationship between the two has produced a huge conflict.

3. The film also uses a lot of low-angle overhead shots, and the importance of low-angle shots is determined according to its front-to-back relationship. In the earlier scenes of Mr. Kane, as a young man, he looks like a hot-tempered reformer with high spirits. In most of the scenes, the ceiling is always low, and Kane is so high up that he seems to dominate his environment. By the end of the movie, Kane is getting old and losing most of his influence, and the movie still shoots him in low angles, like the scene where Kane smashes things in the house after Susan leaves, but now there's a huge amount of space in the room Suppressing him, he looks powerless and insignificant in comparison. The highest angle shot in this film is that after Mr. Kane failed to run for governor, the camera was "buried" underground, and the ceiling of the newspaper office could be seen in the picture, which not only showed the authenticity of the scene, but also created an extremely depressing atmosphere, suggesting that the failure of the giant.

4. The use of lighting in this film has obvious stage traces. For example, the editorial room of the reporter is soaked in a backlight, and the faces of the characters are almost difficult to see, suggesting the abstractness of the characters. Reporter, this deliberately blurred character in the film is the incarnation of the audience/public, and its symbolic meaning is far greater than its specificity. In the scene of Kane reading his "Manifesto for Running a Newspaper", Kane was shrouded in shadows to complete the "manifesto" that he finally betrayed, heralding the failure of Kane's grand ideal.

5. Highlights: a. Kane and Emily's breakfast scene: montage, through the two's lines, performances, make-up and scenery, the two people from the intoxication of the newly married to the marriage change of the same bed and different dreams, with a few shots concise and concise Uniquely displayed. b. The confrontation between Kane and Gertis: the scheduling of the four-person dialogue scene. c. Susan's premiere: the reaction to the theatrical performance--Susan begins to sing, the camera moves up, moves across the sky, into the densely packed poles and ropes on the top, and finally rises to the stage staff's drawbridge, two working The officers looked at each other, one of them holding his nose with his hand. The director deftly collages three different shots to create the illusion of one coherent long shot, and the staff's lively responses are a real illustration of how badly Susan sings.

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Extended Reading

Citizen Kane quotes

  • [last lines]

    Raymond: Throw that junk in.

  • Newsreel Narrator: [at beginning of news reel on Charles Foster Kane's death] In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.