Audience involvement in a film is fundamental to successful filmmaking. A well-made film leads the audience to find themselves being "in the story" and get emotionally as well as mentally involved by identifying with the main characters. As such, filmmakers get the audience to connect with the story by using narrative techniques. In this paper, I will be discussing how Orson Welles uses narrative techniques together with stylistic techniques which can bring about narrative details in the film, Citizen Kane.
The narrative in Citizen Kane follows a unique non-linear structure in which the events do not occur in chronological order. Instead, the story is presented using a series of flashbacks at different times in Mr. Kane’s life. This structure
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elevates the meaning of the film by stringing together sequences with purposeful themes and thus interests the audience more so. The flashbacks do not appear to be in order and often overlap, giving the audience irregular and incomplete glimpses of Mr. Kane’s life. This seems to mimic how memory essentially functions when anybody tries to recall a story. The constant shift from present time to past events allow the audience to better understand the story of Mr. Kane's life where they follow Mr. Thompson on his search for the meaning behind "Rosebud". In addition, the film is told by multiple narrators where the audience participate in the investigation as “detectives” to piece together Mr.
Kane's life from the points of view of others. This allows them to form their own interpretations of Mr. Kane and gauge the biases and prejudices of each narrator: Leland, Bernstein, Thatcher, Susan and Raymond. As such, it is interesting for the audience to see and learn about Mr. Kane from several different points of view. The audience will be also be engaged and eager to find any clues that they pick up throughout the film to solve Mr. Kane’s life and the mystery behind his dying word. Therefore, "Rosebud" serves as an element of motivation for the audience to follow through the film and allow them to be …show more content…
involved. Several parallel structures are also present in the film. The Newsreel parallels the film's plot as a whole. Mr. Kane's life and Mr. Thompson's search for "Rosebud" are futile. Mr. Kane's failure to find love, friendship and happiness is similar to Mr. Thompson's failure to find the significance of the word "Rosebud". Another narrative parallel involves Mr. Kane's mistakes made in building up Susan's opera career and the political campaign. The parallels reveal to the audience that Mr. Kane often makes the same kind of mistakes throughout his life and he does not seem learn from them. Light and shadow are prominently used in this film to give the scenes a certain meaning and atmosphere.
The lighting has been expressively used to inject the audience with desired emotions. An example of a scene which uses lighting to convey meaning can be seen at the beginning of the film. After witnessing a newsreel on the death of Mr Kane, the camera abruptly moves to the reporters who are behind the newsreel. They are raising concerns about the newsreel that has no originality and nothing new to offer to the curious public. Welles uses a very strong backlight to put the reporters in shadow to show that they are not important in the film. Therefore, Welles uses some light to inform the audience not to focus on these reporters and who they are but to keep their interest with the main character, Mr. Kane. Another similar key scene that uses the same technique is when Susan performs terribly in the opera. Initially, Mr. Kane claps his hands like everyone else out of respect to the performer but when he stands up and continues clapping, he is alone and lurking in a shadow. As a result, the audience could only see his silhouette. The use of shadow here is very significant which shows that Mr. Kane’s standing ovation does not matter since he is alone when it comes to his
opinion. Welles has introduced a number of deep focus shots in the film. One obvious example is the scene where Mr. Kane is still a boy and under the custody of his parents. The audience is able to see young Mr. Kane through a window pane playing in the snow while Mr. Thatcher talks over a deal with Mr. Kane’s parents. Welles employs the deep focus shot so that the audience is able to sympathise with Mr. Kane because he has become the subject of the conversation both literally and visually. The audience will be able to realise that Mr. Kane becomes the person he is due to what has happened to him at a young age. The deep focus shot also points out very noticeably that Mr. Kane will become the subject of someone powerful just from the juxtaposition of the adults who are closer to the camera and Mr. Kane who is furthest from the camera. Another use of deep focus involves a scene where Mr. Kane is signing away his fortune, he stands and walks away from the camera towards a bank of windows and then returns. At the beginning of the scene the windows look as though they are a typical distance from the floor. However, as Mr. Kane walks toward them, the audience notices that the windows are in fact more than six feet from the floor. He appears to be absolutely diminished when he stands in front of these now huge windows. Through the use of deep focus in this scene, Welles is able to capture how defeated and broken Kane is at that moment. Again, the audience is able to identify Mr. Kane’s emotions and empathise with him. Another most influential aspect of the film is the integration of various camera angles. Welles uses the crane shot where the camera is elevated. In the film, Susan is shot from a high angle to make her appear powerless against her husband. Low-angle shots are used to create a dramatic tension between characters which provides the audience with the sense of controlling and intimidating. An example of low-angle shot can be observed in a scene where Leland confronts Mr. Kane about his egotistical ways. This creates a serious tone between the two characters and literally heightens their manner of conflict. This low-angle shot is also employed in the initial scene of Mr.Kane’s speech in a political campaign. This angle makes Mr. Kane appears more powerful and gives a sense of fear and insecurity to the audience who is psychologically dominated by the figure on the screen. To conclude, Welles has skilfully use stylistic techniques to complement the narrative form of Citizen Kane. He has successfully determined the way how the audience responded to Mr. Kane in the film
Modern day directors use a variety of methods to hold ones interest. Ethan Hawke and Kenneth Branagh’s created versions of Hamlet that shared some similarities, but ultimately had many differences in respects to an audience’s appeal. An appealing movie is one that has an alluring ambiance and an intellectual stimulus. With these two movie versions, a setting and a mood forced an audience to acquire specific emotions, but Ethan Hawke’s version generated emotions more strongly and effectively. Also, these movies had extremely different uses of music and visuals, but both movie versions incorporated them well for the ambiance it tried to obtain. Finally, both movie versions drew characters to captivate the audience; however in Ethan Hawke’s version, the characters were used so effectively that it was easy to feel involved with them. While both these versions of Hamlet had a captivating ambiance, Ethan Hawke’s version was more appealing due to the intellectual incentive that it offered.
The chapter, Church, has the troop hold up in a church for a few days. In the church, the monks take an immediately likely to the troop help with food and weapon cleaning. A few of the soldiers discuss what they wanted to do before the war. The troops learn more about each other and insight into what faith can be to them.
Mise-en-scène, what the audience sees in a film, is crucial to the movie’s development. Lighting and props are two of the many important aspects of this category. The previously mentioned scene has the goal of representing Kane’s early ideology of what the New York Daily Inquirer will become and provide for its readers. While writing the document, Welles constantly uses lighting to illuminate it for the audience, naturally drawing eyes to the paper even before it is introduced in the film. The lighting of the scene helps viewers identify the document’s value, especially in comparison to Kane as he tends to be less lit then the paper for the majority of scene. The other three cast members, Leland, Bernstein and briefly Sully, continue to be lit but almost never to the magnitude of the paper itself. The first cut of the scene shows Kane writing the document from outside; where a burning gas lamp is the key lighting, allowing the audience to easily notice both the flame and the paper. In the following cut, Kane continually looks at the paper and the gas flame as to signify their imp...
Throughout the course of a lifetime, a common phrase heard is “don’t judge a book by its cover”. This phrase indicates the fact that it is nearly impossible to truly evaluate the life and feelings of a person just by what can be seen about them. This is the case in the film Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles. Charles Foster Kane is a man who would appear to the general public as having it all. A very popular man, Kane owns a successful newspaper company for which he is known worldwide. He builds a gigantic mansion for his second wife and himself, surrounded by intricate and expensive statues. Kane seems to be perfect in every single way, and one may think that he is the happiest man alive. However, Charles never had the things that
Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ cinematic classic, is a film that centers on a group of reporter’s investigation into the meaning of Charles Foster Kane’s last uttered word, “Rosebud.” Citizen Kane ' brings into light many social problems between countries, relationships, and also between competing newspaper companies. It brings into light how a newspaper should react and also brings the corruption of politics. War was breaking out in Europe and throughout the entire film Kane states there will be no war. He ignores the fact people are being killed, tortured, and rounded up like livestock.
Howard Roark’s speech in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead displays the author's personal philosophy of objectivism. Objectivism is an idea that Ayn Rand had developed and promoted in her works of literature. Objectivism advocated for the rights of individual freedoms such as someone being able to do whatever that person desires with their own creations. In this case, Ayn Rand’s character Howard Roark; who had dynamited his own building . Through Rand’s persuading diction, immense detail, and powerful organization, Ayn Rand takes a stand through a fictional character to promote the idea that an individual should be able to live freely without society or the government scrutinizing him.
Citizen Kane is a 114-minute film school providing lessens after lessons in deep focus and rear projection, extreme close-ups and overlapping dialogue. Although appearing as a biographical movie (Biopic), it refused to follow the conventional
Whenever books are adapted for film, changes inevitably have to be made. The medium of film offers several advantages and disadvantages over the book: it is not as adept at exploring the inner workings of people - it cannot explore their minds so easily; however, the added visual and audio capabilities of film open whole new areas of the imagination which, in the hands of a competent writer-director, can more than compensate.
The mise-en-scene that is first seen in the sequence is Welles 's use of lighting. Throughout the film
To furthermore express the tone that was developed, Lois Lowry used punctuation. After Jonas’s father was finished with the baby and it was dead, Jonas’s only thoughts were, “He killed it! My father killed it!” (141). By writing the words, “He killed it! My father killed it!” in italics, the author focuses Jonas’s perception on his father as a murderer once he realized that his father had killed the baby, not send it “elsewhere.” The Committee brainwashed citizens into thinking that when one was “released,” it meant that they were going “elsewhere.” Not only was this deceiving, but if the community found out about this, they would question their safety and The Committee; the citizens would view The Committee as a threat and an enemy. When
A set of practices concerning the narrative structure compose the classical Hollywood Paradigm. These conventions create a plot centering around a character who undergoes a journey in an attempt to achieve some type of goal (). By giving the central character more time on screen, the film helps the audience to not only understand the character’s motivation but also empathize with his/her emotional state. Additionally, some antagonistic force creates conflict with the main character, preventing immediate success(). Finally, after confronting the antagonist, the main character achieves his or her goal along with growing emotionally(). This proven structure creates a linear and relatively easily followed series of events encompassing the leading character and a goal.
Welles prominently portrays his figures with a specific amount of light or darkness, stunningly affecting whole scenes stylistically. The scene at Xanadu establishes Mr. Kane as an overbearing, controlling character. Throughout the scene, Kane is shadowed with darkness upon his face, emphasizing how ‘dark’ he is. Conversely, oftentimes light is directly on Susan, portraying her innocence and how ‘light’ of a character she is. Within this scene, Welles shows Susan wearing white and Mr. Kane wearing a dark colored suit, an overt portrayal of light versus darkness. Susan wearing a white, light colored ensemble portrays her as the submissive one with a lighter, happy-hearted spirit. Wearing a dark suit, Charles Kane is depicted as an overbearing and controlling person....
Welles who would like to set up lights himself placed a grave importance on the lighting of the film. The lighting helped to compliment many of the films scenes by adding an effect of emotion. In scenes where the shadows would be more apparent there was normally something dark occurring, such as the scene where Kane is seen standing on his own after his second wife leaves him. As said by Roger Ebert “Welles created a gloomy dark visual the film world had yet to see.” The use of these techniques is seen by some as the pioneer or predecessor to the genre of noir that soon followed the film’s release. In addition, Kane had brought a great influence for French critics and filmmakers. Many began to use Welles techniques to create cinematic works of their own. This was known as the French New Wave a movement that combined philosophical and artistic themes in film. Along with the lighting Welles made sure to place musical soundtracks throughout the film a technique that hadn’t been used too often. These soundtracks helped add to the scenes and give them their own atmosphere. The musical soundtrack played a vital role in conveying the emotion of the film. In many of the scenes that contained their own sound a greater message was being conveyed than what the film was showing. Welles was very clever in his way of piecing the scenes
“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine, some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything’s okay. I don’t make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything’s not okay.” - David Fincher. David Fincher is the director that I am choosing to homage for a number of reasons. I personally find his movies to be some of the deepest, most well made, and beautiful films in recent memory. However it is Fincher’s take on story telling and filmmaking in general that causes me to admire his films so much. This quote exemplifies that, and is something that I whole-heartedly agree with. I am and have always been extremely opinionated and open about my views on the world and I believe that artists have a responsibility to do what they can with their art to help improve the culture that they are helping to create. In this paper I will try to outline exactly how Fincher creates the masterpieces that he does and what I can take from that and apply to my films.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...