Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane, Orson Welles first feature film, is considered one of the most important and influential films ever made. It was a film way ahead of its time in all senses. It used a non linear approach to the story telling, employed a vast array of visual and audio techniques that were not necessarily new, but had never before been used together to such startling effect.
The story examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, a character that starts out with an idealistic social service, but gradually evolves into a ruthless pursuit of power. Told primarily in flashbacks, the film begins with Kane’s death. With his last breath, Kane says, “Rosebud.” Immediately a newsreel begins, reviewing the highlights of Kane’s career as the camera had recorded them over the years. Unsatisfied, a group of journalists decide to probe deeper in an attempt to discover the truth about Kane, and to discover the significance of “Rosebud.” The journalists set up a series of interviews with key people in Kane’s life, each of whom relates the man’s story as he or she knew it.
      One of the story-telling techniques used in Citizen Kane was the use of montage to collapse time and space. Using the same set and having the characters change costume between cuts so that the scene following each cut would look as if it took place in the same location, but at a time long after the previous cut. This is seen in the breakfast montage where Welles shows the breakdown of Kane’s first marriage.
      Welles pioneered several visual effects in order to cheaply shoot things like crowded scenes and large interior spaces. Many of the shots at Xanadu were done by effectively using miniatures to make the film look much more expensive than it truly was. Make up during the film was also effectively used to portray the effects of aging, especially to depict old Kane.
      Citizen Kane was one of the first movies that expertly used light and shadow to emphasize the importance of...