The term ‘mise-en-scene’ is used to “signify the director’s control over what appears in the film frame” (1) and covers such elements as setting, lighting, costume and the movement and actions of figures appearing within the film.
The iconic Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941), a biopic that traces the life of fictional newspaper magnate Charles Kane, uses the elements of mise-en-scene to reinforce ‘loss’ as a recurring theme throughout the film. As a faceless reporter goes about collecting personal recounts of Kane, the stories told suggest that throughout the majority of his life, Kane was “moving inevitably toward [an inner state of] bitterness, disappointment and loss” (2).

The first flashback scene shown (set at Kane’s childhood home) begins Kane on this aforementioned negative emotional journey. Kane is shown in the background of the scene, while in the foreground, his parents and Mr. Thatcher discuss his future. Kane appears visually trapped within the frames of a window, echoing the way in which he is being ‘trapped’ into Mr. Thatcher’s guardianship. During this scene, a close up of Kane’s indignant expression fades out slowly to reveal the sleigh he happily played with moments before. Having unwillingly left his simplistic home for the riches and supposedly assured success Thatcher can offer him, the sleigh is all that remains, shown abandoned in the foreground, covered in snow. Snow in itself bears “connotations both of burying [the past] and freezing [this idealised memory in Kane’s mind]” (3). Kane is never again shown against a pure white background, suggesting that his childhood (and implicitly his innocence) was wrested from his in this instant, left behind him with his sleigh, all for the sake of trying to guarantee that Kane’s future is a ‘successful’ one. Although Thatcher later gives Kane another sleigh, it is too late; Kane’s defiant rejection of the sleigh demonstrates the way in which it is not so much the sleigh, but his previous childhood happiness that he longs for.
Kane forever onwards appears to harbour a longing for the ‘frozen’ memory of his lost, though most likely idealised childhood. This is suggested by his gasping of “Rosebud” (referring to his much loved sleigh, and essentially, his much missed childhood) at the films beginning.
The theme of loss within Citizen Kane is also shown through his loss of personal relationships, in exchange for what he is taught to perceive as success. His lonely death shows the sad turn that his life has clearly taken, however, the loss of other personal relationships are traced throughout Kane.
Although Kane and his first wife Emily’s relationship is initially depicted as being quite loving and tender, the scenes that follow their blissful courtship demonstrate the loss of such feelings. Their emotional separation is made apparent by the increasingly terse and stilted dialogue the once happy couple share. The tone of their voices become hardened towards each other, and the amount of words they exchange on a daily basis dwindles. The unsettling, almost unnatural stillness of the final scene they appear in together, set amongst an elegant dining setting, appears more as a staged theatre scene than a cozy domestic meal. This suggests to the viewer the way in which Kane and Emily, in their later years, merely played roles in a marriage that no longer satisfied either party.
After Kane’s eventual loss of his newspaper, the loss of his close friendship with Leland, the loss of the election for the Governor of New York and the demise of both of his marital relationships Kane is left utterly alone. Footage from the ‘News on the March’ montage showing a wheelchair bound Kane affirms the loneliness felt in his later years. This feeling of loneliness is perfectly captured by the deliberate poor quality of the footage; that and the unsteady way in which it is shot suggests that he is no longer a man important enough to deserve the solid focus he previously enjoyed.

Citizen Kane and Mise-en-Scene

Citizen Kane (1941) I always wondered Citizen Kane was on the top 100 list of “Best Movies Ever,” or “Timeless films,” or whatever really. After watching it, and knowing more about true appreciation of film I get it, so to speak.
Watching a film takes so much more than just escaping from your own life for a few hours. Being able to turn your brain off and say, “Ok. I get to live in this other world for the day. This is my life for a day.” Film is only about escaping in the sense that a message must escape from the scenes, and the story as a whole. It may never cross the lips of any of the characters, or be written in white on a black screen (as in black and whites), and it won’t be mystically entered into your computerized mind, or sent as a message to your iPhone. No…to get the message of the film you have to watch and know what to look for—the subtle nuances and the mise-en-scene, everything that is in a particular frame, because those are the clues and you are the detective. You must find universal truth and your own personal growth from what you take from the movie. Some movies do a poor job of sending a message and those are the movies that people watch and forget to learn from them. Other are too complex. Citizen Kane is perfect because you can learn everything you ever needed to know about how to analyze a film from it, and it is such a beautifully simple story, with complex characters, making the everyday important, just as it should be in our own lives.
First off, Orson Welles, the writer/director/actor in this film, who actually plays Citizen Kane, was only 25 when he accomplished this feat! He had previously been made popular through his famous “War of the Worlds” broadcast. He took what he learned about telling a story and brought that to his movie-making. Take for example, the scene in which Kane is speaking to his newly married, first wife. The way he uses props and costuming to tell the story is a part of the mise-en-scene that makes it so artistic and draws the point that the couple becomes distant and spiteful of each other. In the first part, the table is close together and the two stare lovingly into each other’s eyes. They banter and Kane chooses to not go to work but to stay with her. As the scene continues to cross-cut through the months, the clothes of the characters became fancier, but also more tight and withholding, the table becomes obnoxiously long and the center piece grows to immense proportions to show the distance that exists both physically and metaphorically between the couple. Now, Kane tells the wife he will do whatever he pleases, and she stoops low to as read the competing newspaper, The Chronicle. The point I made earlier in which he took what he learned from radio, is made when you listen to the scene play out without watching it. If you were not able to see the obvious physical changes in the props, costumes, and characters mannerism, you’d have nothing but their voices, which is what Welles had done in radio. If you merely hear their voices, the dialogue that is on-going, but describes many months of feelings, would make you feel like no time had passes, or that it has all been done in the same few minutes in the narrative’s story, when in fact the dialogue occurs in changing scenes.
The use of lighting and deep focus in Citizen Kane is incredibly remarkable! (Technically speaking, C. Kane was way ahead of its time in how to use technology to tell a story artistically) Deep focus is used often, concentrating on Kane as a boy playing in the snow, seen in the window of his parent’s house while they sign papers for his adoption. It was also used in the important shot when Kane tells the truth in his paper by finishing an article describing the atrocious singing of his wife, originally worked on by his maybe friend, Jedediah. The audience is able to see everything when Jed emerges from his drunken slumber to the “click clack” of Kane finishing on the type-writer. We are able to see Mr. Bernstein’s awkward face in the far right of the screen, Kane’s power close-up in the far left corner with the article, and Jed, in the back, stuck in the doorframe and then slowly approaching Kane from the back.
The intensity of this scene also works well with the much used triangle, three person shot that was utilized many times in Citizen Kane. The triangle stance in which one character occupies each point of the triangle is used when Kane and his ex-wife are black-mailed by the governor so Kane will stop his political campaign. It shows the relationship the characters have with one another, depending on how close they stand, and it is a metaphor for the sliding power from person to person. At first, the governor threatens to expose Kane and his mistress, Susan, to the papers, for sure ruining Kane’s political career. The power tilts when Kane decides not to back down and run anyway. His wife then steals all the power by simply admonishing him and leaving the room. She is done with Kane and her choice to walk-out gives her the ultimate power, even though the governor does end up reporting to the newspapers, sending Kane into political failure. But the wife wins emotionally against Kane, even if she ends up dying, with their son, in a car wreck.
Lighting is the final feature I shall mention as it helped to emphasize certain aspects of characters that add to emotion and drama. The shadows that continually cross Kane’s face are remarkable and as he ages, the light seems to show more wrinkles, more tiredness, and more unhappiness. It shows the vastness of the fireplace as Xanadu, where Susan does another puzzle, lonely for company. Shadows were the key to making this movie work so well, and without which, the story would have been accepted in a much less dramatic, more neutral tone.
I could praise all day the ways in which Citizen Kane is a wonder to learn from…however, I am simply a young, college student and at times it did get boring. A little slow from time to time and a weird bird screeching cross-cut that made me and everyone else in the theatre laugh and jump. You are compelled to care about the characters, and the shots are amazing. The very architecture and sheer massness of Xanadu makes you understand fully Kane’s need to fill his love with objects and persons that he could try to compensate for lost love from his mother, but they never do. And the emptying out of his mansion at the end of the movie is a signal of this.
The truth that I gained from this story of a newspaper tycoon is that some events and stories of interest will never be figured out, and maybe they should just be left alone as is. We don’t need to know everything, and even if we did, we couldn’t fully understand it, to appreciate it. This is the very feeling the viewer goes through at the closure of the movie in which the audience is brought cessation, having figured out what “Rosebud” means, but as the dedicated reporter points out, “Rosebud” meant a lot more than any story could ever do justice too, and it would do better to just leave it to rest in peace, like Citizen Kane.