Perspective is another device through which Welles conveys power equations in the film. One masterly use of perspective is Kane’s campaign for governor of New York. The hall in which he gives his public address is so grand in scale that people seated on stage look miniscule. The audience look even smaller and are shown in mere abstraction. There is a huge larger-than-life photograph of Kane placed in the background, implying the grandeur of his political ambition. This juxtaposition of the vastness of the auditorium and the miniature of the audience reinforces the high stakes of the political campaign. Perspective is likewise used in another scene where Mr. Thompson, the reporter looking for the story behind the enigmatic last words ‘rosebud’, interview Kane’s close associate Mr. Bernstein. Mr. Bernstein is by then the Chairman of the business empire left behind by Kane and jokingly tells the reporter that he’s got all the time in the world for this interview. The mise-en-scene for this scene is elaborate and precise. The chair in which Bernstein sits is too big for his size. But this is no error of oversight. It symbolizes a throne just as high shining black-hats represent the capitalist millionaire. The way the shot is framed, we see a high open window through which the towering skyscrapers of New York City are visible, further accentuating the position of power in which Mr. Bernstein is located. Citizen Kane and some other films by Welles have been noted for their dealing of visual space. In an illuminating essay, film critic Hector Currie has pointed “to a tension or duality in the film between containment and release”. (Jaffe, 1979) The film encompasses a wide assortment of places and journeys, but it distinctly returns to “spatial dilemmas and movements too fundamental for the hero of the film or the viewer to ignore.” (Jaffe, 1979) This duality of containment and release in Citizen Kane
“persists in the succession of shots we encounter once we are within the mansion. The presiding significance of the window mediating that duality also continues. Inside we are confronted not only by the bed we began to discern from outside the window but also by the vague shape of a figure prone in the bed. In three shots we will see that the figure is Kane dying. The access we have gained is to a rather special room, the chamber of his death. Furthermore, in the dissolve from the exterior shot of the window to the interior shot, the ledge of the window has come to coincide with the lower horizontal line of the bed. The window has conducted us, then, directly to Kane’s deathbed. Yet more important is that the coincidence of window ledge and bed implies that Kane is dying on the threshold between open and closed space.” (Jaffe, 1979)
In their palatial abode in Xanadu, the slowly declining relationship of Charles Kane and his ever estranging wife Susan Alexander is shown with great visual effect. The use of space is exploited very well by cinematographer Gregg Toland. The palatial mansion in which they live a secluded life separates the couple more than offering them privacy. Even the words they speak give out echoes due to the acoustics of the hall, thereby creating an artificiality and lack of intimacy in their communication. There is one poignant scene in this sequence, where Susan will be solving a jigsaw puzzle by the fireside. The size of the fireside is unusually big and it creates the illusion of an unassuming victim sitting beside a Chinese fire dragon which is about to swallow the former. It is scenes like these will underscore the visual brilliance of Citizen Kane. Its visual symbolisms, perspectives, lighting and framing are so brilliant that even watching the film in mute is a pleasurable experience. Indeed watching it thus opens up a new dimension in the appreciation of the film. The interplay of the visual and aural mediums into producing a synchronous whole is even comparable to that of an opera. For example,