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Cinematography of Citizen Kane

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Citizen Kane has been voted the greatest American film to be ever made in poll after poll. And this assessment comes from critics, directors and fans alike.  There are several reasons why this achievement is possible. When it was released in 1941, the film revolutionized and revitalized the art of filmmaking in Hollywood, which was languishing at the time in its own aura of complacency. The precocious genius of Orson Welles is stamped in all aspects of filmmaking – the direction, screenplay, storyline, camerawork, editing, casting, and even in the political messages contained therein.  It is an anomaly though, that, though the film was nominated for 9 Oscar categories, it only won in one. (Jackson & Merlock, 2006)   The only plausible rationale for this discrepancy between its legendary status and lack of formal recognition by the Academy is that the film was way ahead of its time.  The film pioneered and engendered so many facets of the filmmaking process that it took several years for members of the Academy to warm up to its accomplishments. This essay will focus on the cinematography of the film and highlight how it contributes to and enhances the overall cinematic excellence.

The opening sequence of the film shows the funeral of the iconic American media baron Charles Foster Kane in his isolated residence in the monumental Xanadu. What follows is a10 minute obituary in the form of a newsreel that encompasses all the key moments in the life of the great man.  Beginning with his childhood in the rural American wilderness, the newsreel traces how much wealth and power Kane was able to acquire during his peak.  This newsreel sequence is one of the most original and brilliant in the history of cinema.  The serious yet authoritative voice of the newsreel narrator ebb and flow in-tune with the events of Charles Kane’s life. The intonation, irony and subtle humour of this voiceover is executed to perfection.  Matching this aural perfection is the visuals, which are some of the best montages ever assembled.  The pace of the montage arrangement is brisk and the shots are short and crisp.  The sequencing of these shots adheres to a musical rhythm, which is again in tune with the rhythmic oration in the voiceover.  What is striking about this montage is its visual display of power – either political or economic. The shots of elephants and horses airlifted to the private zoo in Xanadu are forever etched in the mind.  It is difficult to lose the symbolism of power in air-lifting one of the biggest mammals in the planet.  Likewise, the bird’s eye view of the sprawling Xanadu is a visual illustration of Kane’s wealth.  When the voiceover narrates how politically influential Kane was, his image is embedded into a standard German propaganda shot of Hitler waving to a crowd.  This is one of the earlier implementation of morphing and overlapping two discrete visuals into one shot.  In the context of the film, not only was it humorous but also serves to illustrate the kind of political influence that Charles Kane wielded in his pomp.  One of the most referenced scenes in the movie, illustrating Welles’ and cinematographer Gregg Toland’s use of deep-focus photography is the one about the childhood of young Charles Foster Kane.  So much has been its impact that,

“After Citizen Kane Deep focus photography became widespread, especially in the so-called film noir films of the following decade. Welles’ audaciously effective idea of combining miniatures with full scale settings in sweeping camera moves harkens back to 1930’s The Bat Whispers, photographed by Ray June, ASC for Roland West. The Kane visuals also have much in common with those of Mad Love (1935). It is evident that Toland originated some of the ideas that Welles utilized so perfectly, and that Walker and Dunn also influenced Welles. The collaboration of unit art director Perry Ferguson was even stronger than is usual between director, cinematographer and designer. Ferguson worked closely throughout with Welles in making hundreds of idea sketches to fit the evolving concepts of the film.” (Turner, 1991)


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,

“Watching it without the sound generates the impact of a glorious “optical symphony”; listening only to its sound track stimulates extremely dynamic visual imagery; studying its script (even with Welles’s numerous directorial remarks on the text’s margin) confirms that it stops short of describing in literary terms what one experiences while perceiving the film in the movie theater; and seeing it on a TV screen (the bigger the worse) is like trying to aesthetically appreciate Rembrandt’s paintings reproduced in the newspaper…It is the greatest American movie about seeing.” (Sterritt, 1991)

Both Welles and Toland had put it so much thought in visualizing the scenes that the visuals masterfully supplement the verbal narrative. Kane, despite his great material success and social status, is perennially in need of love.  After all, it was as a young boy that he was separated from his parents by his foster father, who was cold and calculating and put money before human tenderness.  As a result, Kane grew up a love-deprived child and his actions in adult life are attempts to recompense for this loss.  But the folly of the great Charlie Kane is in believing that he can buy all the love he needs with money.  His hobby of collecting antique statues from Europe is again a rich symbolic touch – for these statues, while monetarily very valuable, are just objects of stone, incapable of giving him any love.  They once again highlight Kane’s misplaced belief that somehow these stone objects would give him personal fulfilment.  As the final days of his life in decline clearly show, his belief was wrong.  The grand final scene when the property of Xanadu would be disposed-off by officials, we see vast halls full of statues lined up.  The mise-en-scene is brilliantly conceived, as the aerial shot of these antique statues reveal both the scale of Kane’s material possessions as well as the inevitable futility of such an exercise.  After all, the term Xanadu is borrowed from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem Ozymandias, the Emperor of Xanadu, whose decline and fall is the mythical allegory to that of Charles Kane. One doesn’t usually associate Citizen Kane with special effects, but

“its reliance on optical compositing may be judged by the simple fact that the film was heavier in special effects than any RKO picture since King Kong. In fact, some of the famed deep focus shots had to be achieved through opticals or projection process. Strangely enough, the visual style of the film was employed-as Welles, Toland and Wise all have noted-with a view toward heightening realism. The deep focus, wide-angle shots were more akin to what the eye is accustomed to seeing in life than are the customary views made in variable focus with longer lenses.” (Turner, 1991)


One of the most painful moments of Charles Kane’s decline and demise is when Susan leaves him for good. At that moment, the old and already embattled Kane goes into a rage, smashing up the furniture in their bedroom.  The mise-en-scene for this scene was aptly constructed, as expensive artefacts and furnishings in the room are met with Kane’s ire.  The only object that stops Kane’s uncontrollable spree is a glass artefact representing snow.  This has a huge effect on Kane, as it suddenly reminds him of one of his most cherished childhood possessions – his skate board. Named the ‘rosebud’, the skateboard was for Kane the only talisman of love.  Through ‘rosebud’ Kane found a constant spring of comfort and security.  It is to the image and the concept of rosebud that he would return in moments of crisis.  He just as well possessed it along with his repository of valuable antique statues.  In the edifying final shot of the film ‘rosebud’ would be thought of as junk and put into fire.  This shot is the final missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle the film sought out to solve. And the cinematographic technique employed to convey these layers of meaning is of the highest quality.  In depicting the dying moments of the fallen hero, “a dirge-like music plays in the background as a dying Charles Foster Kane, in his seventy-sixth year, drops a snow globe to the ground and utters his last word, “Rosebud,” which is revealed at the film’s end as the name of his childhood sled.” (Jackson & Merlock, 2006) This is in remembrance of his joyful rides in the snow outside his parents’ boarding house – an experience that is perhaps also his last thought.

References

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