Orson Welles' Citizen Kane

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Orson Welles' Citizen Kane

Having success the first time around is very uncommon. Orson

Welles's first feature film richly realizes the full potential

of excellent craftsmanship. Citizen Kane is almost indisputably the

greatest achievement in the history of filming. In 1941, this film was

considered by many as the best film ever made. This film is about the

enormous conflict between two twentieth-century icons, publisher

William Randolph Hearst and the prodigy of his time, Orson Welles. The

rather overwhelming beginning of an opening sequence is still as

electrifying as any in the history of movies. That tarnished sign on a

forbidding black wire fence is the first thing we see in Orson Welles'

Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane is a movie about perception and

projection. Indeed, with the complex theme the whole movie seems to be

placed in a kind of psychological trauma for the viewers. Citizen Kane

is a portrait of a public and private figure that remains tantalizingly

unfinished. Excellent acting was revealed for the first time as these

new roles played out. Orson Welles was a director ahead of his time

and his portrayal of Kane shows his acting ability. This film is one

of the first films to rely heavily on style and visuals, Citizen Kane

uses camera, lighting, and set techniques to show Kane's rise and fall

from power. The movie as a whole -- though as artistically satisfying

as a picture can get -- also leaves us with certain unexplicated pieces

of Kane's life that only we, as viewers of Citizen Kane, can put

together for ourselves.

There's no doubt that Citizen Kane is a great movie. It is a

pioneering film that forever changed film making. Its plot is

one of the most creative and original in all of movie history. Citizen

Kane is a brilliantly made film. I can't really take the full impact

of it because it was made in 1941, and all the film techniques Welle's

used, are used frequently today. Nowadays, a film has to be

emotionally involving and have an original plot to get recognition.

But back in the 40s, no one had ever seen some of them before, and so

it was new and original.

Conversely, the film features rapid montage sequences

permitting sudden ellipses of time and space for the first

time. This was a special technique that Orson Well used time

progressing. Opening and concluding with the famous NO TRESPASSING

sign outside of his palace, Xanadu, the film depicts newspaper giant

Charles Foster Kane's economic and spiritual rise and his eventual

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