citizenkane
The classic masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941), is probably the world's most famous and highly rated film, with its many remarkable scenes, cinematic and narrative techniques and innovations. The director, star, and producer were all the same individual - Orson Welles (in his film debut at age 25), who collaborated with Herman J. Mankiewicz on the script and with Gregg Toland as cinematographer. Within the maze of its own aesthetic, Citizen Kane develops two interesting themes. The first concerns the debasement of the private personality of the public figure, and the second deals with the crushing weight of materialism. Taken together, these two themes comprise the bitter irony of an American success story that ends in futile nostalgia, loneliness, and death. The fact that the personal theme is developed verbally through the characters while the materialistic theme is developed visually, creating a distinctive stylistic counterpoint. It is against the counterpoint that the theme!s unfold within the structure of a mystery story. Its theme is told from several perspectives by several different characters and is thought provoking. The tragic story is how a millionaire newspaperman, who idealistically made his reputation as the champi
luminous close-ups in which faces are detached from their backgrounds. When characters move across rooms, the floors and ceilings move with them. This technique which is highly unusual, tends to dehumanize characters by reducing them to fixed ornaments in a shifting architecture. The choice of camera position was an important factor in getting across artistic and psychological effects. To the photograph a person or object from below, distorts that object. It tends to elongate a person, making him seem more important. It also intimidates the audience, since it is in the inferior position of looking up. The scene gives an added power to the person on the screen. Kane is indeed bloated and enlarged by his material possessions, and in comparison, the audience feels very small. Yet it is precisely his excessiveness, which has distorted him and made him grotesque to our sensibilities. Kane is a selfish, greedy man, and his actions have distorted his life and appearance. The movie is! ted in reverse at the very end of the film. The initial and concluding clash of realism and expressionism suggests in a subtle way, the theme of Citizen Kane. The intense material reality of the fence dissolves into the fantastic unreality of the castle, and in the end, the mystic pretension of the castle dissolves into the mundane substance of the fence. Matter has come full circle from its original quality to the grotesque baroque of its excess. As each flashback unfolds, the visual scenario of Citizen Kane orchestrates the dialogue. A universe of ceilings dwarfs Kane's personal stature. He becomes the prisoner of his possessions, the ornament of his furnishings, and the fiscal instrument of his collections. His booming voice is muffled by walls,
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Approximate Word count = 1169
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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