Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane is the first feature film directed by Orson Welles (he had directed two short films previously), and is loosely based on the lives of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, the reclusive aerospace and movie mogul Howard Hughes, and the Chicago utilities magnate Samuel Insull. Welles maintained that the character is a composite of several historical individuals. Internally while it was under production, it was referred to as RKO 281. The film premiered on May 1, 1941. Endlessly discussed and dissected by critics and viewers alike, this innovative film is perhaps the most influential ever in film history.

Film-making innovations

Film scholars and historians view Citizen Kane as Welles' attempt to create a new style of filmmaking by studying the various forms of movie making, and combining them all into one (much like D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation did in 1915). Examination of the techniques used by Welles and his crew reveals elements of expressionism in the use of light and shadow, noting the influence of German and Russian filmmakers. The film is even seen as one of the predecessors of method acting, as seen during the scene where Kane vents his anger at his political opponent, Jim Gettys, at the top of a flight of stairs. (Welles actually tripped and broke his ankle during the filming of that scene, but the scene continued and made it into the final print of the film.)

Related Topics:
D. W. Griffith - The Birth of a Nation - Expressionism - German - Russian - Method acting

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The most innovative technical aspect of "Kane" is the unprecedented use of deep focus. In nearly every scene in the film, the foreground, background and everything in between are all in sharp focus. This was done by legendary cinematographer Gregg Toland through his experimentation with lenses and lighting. Anytime the deep focus was impossible—for example in the scene when Kane finishes a bad review of Alexander's opera while at the same time firing the person who started the review—Toland used an optical printer to make the whole screen appear in focus (one piece of film is printed onto another piece of film).

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Another unorthodox method used in the film was the way low-angle cameras were used to display a point of view facing upwards, thus allowing ceilings to be shown in the background of several scenes. Since movies were primarily filmed on sound stages and not on location during the era of the Hollywood studio system, it was impossible to film at an angle that showed ceilings because the stages had none. Welles' crew used black cloth draped above the set to produce the illusion of a regular room with a ceiling, while the boom mikes were hidden above the cloth.

Related Topics:
Sound stage - Hollywood - Studio system

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One of the story-telling techniques introduced in this film was using a series of jump cuts shot on the same set while the characters changed costume and make-up between cuts so that the scene following the cut would look as if it took place at a time long after the previous cut. In this way, Welles chronicled the breakdown of Kane's first marriage, which took years of story time, in a matter of minutes. Prior to this technique, filmmakers often had to use a long period of screen time to explain the character's changed circumstances. For example, in Erich von Stroheim's masterpiece Greed, the breakdown of the marriage of the main characters takes almost an hour of screen time, even in the most abbreviated cut.

Related Topics:
Jump cuts - Marriage - Erich von Stroheim - Greed

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Welles also pioneered several visual effects in order to cheaply shoot things like crowd scenes and large interior spaces. For example, the scene where the camera in the opera house rises dramatically to the rafters to show the workman showing a lack of appreciation for the second Mrs. Kane's performance was shot by panning a camera upwards over the performance scene, matching it with a painting showing the upper regions of the house, and then matching it again with the scene of the workmen.

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During the filming (June 29, 1940 - October 23, 1940), Welles prevented studio executives of RKO from visiting the set. He understood their desire to control projects and he knew they were expecting him to do an exciting film that would correspond to his The War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Welles' RKO contract had given him complete control over the production of the film when he signed on with the studio, something that he never again was allowed to exercise when making motion pictures.

Related Topics:
June 29 - 1940 - October 23 - RKO - The War of the Worlds

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