Innovative Techniques In Citizen Kane's Film

Citizen Kane was a film that broke new ground for the possibilities of storytelling in cinema, and used every aspect of production­­writing, photography, acting, editing, and sound­­in masterful ways that challenged the status quo of studio films and paved the way for even greater innovation that followed. In a time of light­hearted studio films, the number of serious (what cynics might call “artsy”) movies being made was low, and often resulted in poor theater success. There was, and in many ways, still is a hesitance to place resources and money into projects for which there is no guarantee of financial return. Following the notoriety that director/producer Orson Welles’ generated from his infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast, the Hollywood establishment took a change on the young wunderkid and allowed him unprecedented freedom in the making of his first film. The result was, almost inevitably, a financial failure (although this was due not a little to the efforts of William Randolph Hearst, who tried his hardest to see the film completely destroyed). It was simply too challenging for the audience of the time to comprehend. It bucked tradition and was never satisfied with doing things the way everyone else in Hollywood had. Because of this, Kane was truly ahead of its time.

Citizen Kane is now universally revered for its cinematography and visuals.

Cinematographer Gregg Tolland used innovative techniques to create the feelings of impotent power and loss of control for Kane, as well as generating the multiple storylines and narrators and

the continuous pacing that characterizes the film. His techniques included the now­famous use of “deep focus”, intended to keep multiple layers in focus simultaneously, creating incredibly complex visual compositions that still thrill today. In the pivotal scene in which Kane’s mother signs her wealth over to him and he leaves for the city, Tolland and Welles use many of these revolutionary techniques to tell the story in several long shots. During the longest of these takes, the background consists of young Kane, seen through a window playing outside, as his mother and her banker sign legal documents cementing their wealth and custody of the boy, while his father watches powerlessly in the midground. The sheer number of layers is made all the more powerful as they are all in perfect focus, contrast, and composition; we all instinctively know who the scene is about under the surface (Kane), while the surface action takes place closer to the camera. Scenes and moments like this permeate the film, and give it a distinctive visual style. Another status­quo­challenging technique used in this film is the pervasive use of low­angle shots. These shots, which often showed the ceilings of the rooms in which they were shot, serve as visual symbolism throughout the film of the inevitable “ceiling” that greatness and wealth run up against. No matter how high Kane gets­­and in Xanadu, the ceilings are so high as to be unseen­­he will always crash into a ceiling at some point. This, in fact, is the central story of the film. It was in the visual genius of Tolland and the directorial deftness of Welles that such an important story element ties in perfectly with the innovative spirit of the technical production.
No one today can deny that Citizen Kane is one of the most important films in the history of motion pictures.

It showed the establishment of its time what could be done with ingenuity and dogged invention and creativity. It inspired a whole generation of increasingly daring filmmakers to do what “couldn’t” be done, and it reveals to us today much about both the spirit of its time and how we relate to such ideas in our

own.