Citizen Kane
Charles Foster Kane says at one point "Don't believe everything you hear on the radio," during the film Citizen Kane. These are ironic words, coming from the mouth of actor Orson Welles, who, three years earlier, had broadcast a radio adaptation of H.G. Well's The War of the Worlds that infamously led to a minor panic in the US, with several lis-teners firmly believing that fiction had become reality and that Martians had landed on Earth. Thankfully, no such creatures had arrived, enabling Welles to diversify into the world of movies, and to once again blur the distinction between the real and unreal by creating Citizen Kane, a work that would have an even greater impact than The War of A plot synopsis of the film is the story of one man's rise and fall in the media world. Essentially, the film is a story about a single person's life, and yet it has tran-scended this to become one of the most admired (by critics and the public alike) and influential films of the 20th century. This it achieved through an ambitious and impres-sive synthesis of technical innovation and stylistic and narrative originality. Despite being Welles' first film, the production company, RK
As the camera moves up, so each shot is 'wiped' into the next from top to bottom, giving the illusion that it is still the same, unedited take. [8] Not only were these techniques highly unusual, but its fluidity and the fact that it is nearly undetectable is astonishing for a film made in 1940. O Radio Pictures, gave him almost total creative freedom. This can be seen, for example, in the scene in which Kane sells The Inquirer to Thatcher. This had been attempted in other films to a lim-ited extent, but was used frequently in Citizen Kane. Critically the film was massively successful, with several critics hailing it as the most mature and important film to be released for decades, but it seemed a little too dark and ambiguous for contemporary audiences. This adds visual emphasis to Kane's personal situation of submis-sion. Mankiewicz, beacause the script was unusual for several reasons. The importance of this break with his parents is made all the more important with the reve-lation of the childhood sled being the mysterious 'rosebud' - it would seem that his childhood memories have stayed with Kane throughout his life and, despite his stag-gering success and the events in his life, the memories of a small house in the snow(as also depicted within the shattering paperweight) and a child's sled have always remained firm in his mind, even if he is not altogether certain as to why. It can now be regarded as being a clear fifteen years ahead of its time. He later wrote "Like a painter's or a writer's, my work was my own and nobody else's, to be respected as private property, not handed over for pro-cessing on the assembly line. It is only at this point that the film's main narrative begins, although this is to be interrupted throughout by the flashbacks and visual techniques such as the newspaper headlines and temporal editing. In the latter scene, theonly real thing is the stage itself, the entire audience consisting of a miniature that was lit carefully to imply movement. Indeed, when the technique is used in modern films, it is often hailed as being something remark-able, and for such effective usage to have existed sixty years ago is truly remarkable.
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Acceptance Essays
