Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane has been consistently ranked as one of the best films ever made. A masterpiece of technique and storytelling, the film helped to change Hollywood film-making and still exerts considerable influence today. However, at the time of its premiere in 1941, it was a commercial failure that spelled disaster for Welles' Hollywood career.
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 themes unfold within the structure of a mystery story. Its theme is told from several perspectives by several different characters and is thought provoking.
Techniques such as single source lighting, creative use of shadows, montage, obscure camera angles, and deep focus photography make the film more enthralling visually, but also contributed to the narrative and many of the themes. The most defining stylistic element of Citizen Kane is the lighting. Welles meant for it to be a dark picture, unlike anything that had been filmed up to that time, so he used single source lighting by having a single stream of light within the scene leaving everything else to darkness. The object was to make the lighting seem less artificial, but also to use single lighting devices in order to give the scene a certain ambience.
Perhaps the most memorable use of a single source lighting is the first scene following the “News of the March”, where the reporters debate how they will add to the story. There is a single, bright light source that comes from the minuscule window, but is so large that it covers most of the room in shadow. As a result, the characters are indistinct, at best a silhouette. This scene is effective because it sets the stage for the rest of the film and also depicts a great deal about the reporters themselves; they are not primary characters. Even Thompson, who through his pursuit of Rosebud is the catalyst for the rest film, is not important enough to light adequately. This is restated by his not being photographed directly throughout the rest of the film, until the very end when he essentially gives up on his pursuit of Rosebud.
The way this scene is lit also says something about the filmmaker's view on members of the media. As viewers we are made aware that what we take as objective reporting on film is in actuality something crafted by the news media to generate public interest. In many ways, the film is a condemnation of the media, with Hearst being its primary target. By casting all of the reporters in shadow, Welles diminishes their overall importance, not just as characters, but also as an institution. The reporter scene also happens to be one of the strongest uses of shadows and light, which is a more prevalent technique, used throughout the film to elude the characters’ intentions and motivations. Shadow is used to express the ethical value of a character; they cast doubt on a character's integrity, or by the absence of shadow, display a character's innocence or good intentions. As opposed to the lighting of a scene, the use of shadow is more effective on a character level rather than on a thematic level.
Shadows are used extensively in the film in order to display Kane's superiority over those around him. One of the most effective uses of shadows is between Kane and his second wife, Susan. This takes place when she finally loses control and lashes out at Kane after being criticized by Leland in the Inquirer. She tells Kane that she wishes to quit, but he demands that she continue singing. He stands above her and momentarily she is covered by his shadow, suggesting his dominance over her. He intimidates her while also striking fear within her, commanding that she must do has he wishes.
The frequent use of strong camera angles serves to establish particular relationships between characters and provides clear indications how we are to understand aspects of Kane's life. Often the camera films Kane from a low angle that accentuates the sense of power he exerts over others, while high angles are use to signify how these others are forced to yield to his will. Low angles are used most dramatically at moments when his power is at its height
When Kane's sense of unbridled power begins to work against itself, a low angle shot serves to signify his strength. When Gettys brings Emily to Susan’s apartment, we see the collection of figures from a low angle that shows Kane, with Susan at his side, behind Emily, staring down at her as she reads about Kane's affair with Susan. The look on his face shows the same determined resolve. But his opponent, the experienced political boss Gettys, stands quietly in the back right, also in focus, watching the scene unfold. Even as we see the limits to Kane's power being invoked, he remains the driven, defiant Kane who will let nothing stand in his way. As Gettys descends the stairs, after warning that defiance in this case would be foolish, Kane leans down across the railing of the flight above yelling at Gettys, threatening to expose him and have him sent to prison. This scene in the stairwell is shot from an extreme low angle that exaggerates the position of power the camera has granted Kane throughout the film. This exaggerated angle, together with the crazed look on his face, indicates that an overestimation of his power will lead to Kane's downfall.
Deep focus is a cinematography technique used often in Citizen Kane that showed every element of a particular shot in perfect detail. Deep focus allowed the filmmakers to place more details in a given scene and it also served as a vehicle to allow them to be more experimental with shots. The shot of a young Kane playing outside while his mother, father, and Thatcher remain inside is a perfect example of how deep focus could impact a shot. This shot discussed above of the boy Kane playing in the snow outside his mother's boarding house. The camera pulls back from its position in the window to include in the frame his mother, Thatcher, and her husband, who had been watching Kane playing outside. As the camera continues to track backwards while Thatcher and his mother move to a table in the foreground, we still see Kane outside in the snow, now framed by the window. Throughout the scene the focus remains sharp through the full depth of the shot. While we see Thatcher and the mother in a medium shot signing the papers that will determine Kane's life, the small figure of the boy in the distant background remains in sharp focus, as do the hands signing the papers in the foreground. This distance between the adults and Kane sets the theme of isolation to be seen throughout the rest of the film.
It is interpreted that the separation between Kane and those whom he should trust the most, his parents, shows his lack of a basic functional relationship that will continue to haunt him for the rest of his life. His loss of connection with his parents relates to his loss of connection and/or emotion to anyone else around him. One of the prominent yet secretive techniques within Citizen Kane is the use of montage. The use of montage is so important because it show the passing of time within a few scenes without dragging the film through unnecessary scenes.
The most expressive use of montage uses a combination of dialogue, facial expressions and clothing to represent the desecration of a marriage all in the course of breakfast. As the scene progresses the appearance of Emily, the foliage on the tabletop and the conversation all change and decrease. Initially, Emily is wearing a revealing dress, representing her youthful sexuality and naivety, but as the montage progresses, her attire becomes more modest; until the final scene, when Emily is in a dress that gives off a dull and cold appearance. In addition to clothing, the dialogue of the conversations also changes. In the beginning, Kane and Emily converse like any two lovers would, and exchange compliments and casually discuss events. However, as the time passes, the conversations become more and more argumentative, colder and less passionate until the final scene when they reach the point of silence. Along with conversation and attire, the foliage on top the table becomes less and less, representing the loss of “fertile soil” within the relationship. While Kane and Emily were once fruitful lovers, they have now become dry and barren.
Citizen Kane is still respected and admired because of the groundbreaking cinematic techniques that are just as inspirational to filmmakers today as they were fifty years ago. Single source lighting and creative use of shadows and light inspired an entire genre of films called noir. Deep focus and the use of ceilings are seldom used in film these days, but it still has plenty of influence on modern cinematography. The technical and stylistic innovations of Citizen Kane changed films forever. The most significant scene to me is one of the opening scenes. Kane’s last word being “Rosebud” signifies why he led the life that he did. The paperweight that he dropped after his death containing the scene of a little log cabin in the falling snow encapsulates, almost literally, the connotative associations of "Rosebud." It offers an external, small perspective of the scene from within the cabin of Kane playing in the snow. Through the window the camera captures and frames as an epiphany of Kane's life the final moment of his happy childhood. Once Thatcher takes this from him he becomes totally obsessed with the world of finance and power. Unable to extricate him from this obsession that has replaced the lost world of his happy youth, all attempts to rediscover it are doomed to failure. His loss of passion with Emily directly relates to his misunderstanding of what a man is supposed to be. He was raised to have greed bred within him. He is attracted to Susan because of her naïve, childlike ignorance of the world he lives in but he pushes her to pursue fame and glory as he does, until she finally escapes his grasp. I think that “Rosebud: signifies his loss of innocence and recollection of his unspoiled boyhood. As he lies on his death bed, Kane must think of all of those who he has come into contact throughout his life. All of those who gave him a chance to save him from himself; but Kane, in all of his greed and selfishness, did not see his wrong doings. I also think that “Rosebud” was also his way of apologizing to himself and to those he has wronged. He wonders what his life would be like if he had never had the opportunities’ that were presented to him; notoriety and power. Citizen Kane was made as a satire of William Rudolph Hearst but it may also serve as a warning; wealth cannot replace happiness.