The 1941 groundbreaking drama Citizen Kane, by Orson Welles, proved to extend far beyond the sum of its original worth. The audiences of the time never fully grasped the deeper meaning behind the story and as a result it suffered financially. However, today amidst all the visual effects and CGI thrown into almost every movie, Citizen Kane still holds the bar for its ability to tell a story within the story. The aspects of the movie that intrigue this avid moviegoer are the ways in which Welles is able to manipulate the film and the lighting in order to produce a cinematographic wonder. His ability to create new camera shots and tell us something about the characters just by their placement within the scene and the angles in which they were filmed gives you an insight to his character's development without having to say a word. And, in comparison to other movies of its time, Citizen Kane consciously moved in a different direction, pushing the boundaries of filming and the capturing of the audiences' perception.
             One of the finest examples in which Welles boasts his complete control over the medium of film is in the very beginning of the movie. At the time, many genre of film were being used to convey different cinematic ideas to the audiences. Film types such as 'the musical', 'news reels', and 'dramas', were each created with certain attributes in their filming so that the audiences could distinguish one from the other. Now what is so truly unique about the beginning of the film is the way in which it culminates all these genre of film types in order to set the scene for the rest of the film.
             The very opening of the film, which consequently is the end of the story, portrays a very dramatic beginning with some horror movie elements built into the camera shots. Such shots as the flash zoom to the extreme close-up shot of the character Charles Foster Kane's lips whispering the ever-my...