Unit One

Citizen Kane is a fictional documentary of Charles Foster Kane (loosely depicting the life of William Randolph Hearst) done by reporter Jerry Thompson. Thompson interviews Walter Thatcher, Kane's financial adviser and guardian. Kane's parents had given his custody to Thatcher when they gained the permits to a successful gold mine. With Thatcher Kane was well provided for materialistically, but lacked love. As Kane grows up he decides to run a newspaper, the highlights of this are provided by Kane's friend Mr. Bernstein. The more practical and critical commentary of this time is from Kane's companion, though not necessarily friend Jed Leland. Kane claims to write for the common man, but is really serving his own interests in being loved by the populace. He eventually loses the newspaper in the midst of the depression. Kane marries twice, once to Emily Norton which fails because of his obsession with the newspaper, and once to Susan Alexander whom he forces to be an opera singer. She eventually leaves him because though he will give her whatever she wants he cannot love her, but expects to be loved in return. It is Kane's affair with Susan that eventually loses him his election for governor of New York. After the lost election Kane exiles himself at Xanadu, a palace in the middle of being constructed, there he dies alone uttering his last words "Rosebud" which drives the whole plot. Rosebud turns out to be the name of his childhood sled.

Overall Citizen Kane is a very powerful movie. It brings up several key issues such as the trust placed in elected officials and how much they actually believe their policies and how much they say they believe their policies to get elected. It is also a good study of human interaction and what will drive people into action. For example Kane wants to be loved by everyone, even Jed Leland after he starts writing a critical review of Susan's opera performance. That is why he tries to prove he is honest by finishing Leland's critical view and then attempting to bribe him into friendship after he is fired. Though Citizen Kane is not one of my favorite movies it incorporates a lot of cinematic elements which help make it an important film benchmark and gets several key points of Orson Welles across.

During the whole movie the viewer is intensely aware of their position as a viewer and don't get too emotionally attached to the sequences of events. Admittedly this could partly be because we watched it in so many segments that it seemed broken up and disjointed. However mostly I believe it is because there is no redeeming character. Kane is essentially trying to con the people, others are weak characters, and Jerry Thompson is unimportant. Orson Welles also makes conscious cinematic decisions to emphasize this. The opening scene with a series of dissolves of fences after fences makes the viewer feel like an intruder on a private scene. There are no shots from a subjective point of view and the movie switches from character perspective to character perspective with no constants except Kane, but the viewer never gets to see his perspective. This further increases the viewers distance from the people and sequences happening on screen. This is probably why I did not connect so well with the movie and why it isn't one of my favorites. There could be many reasons that Welles chose to create this distance, personally I believe that it is because it makes it more like a documentary that Thompson was trying to create.

There are key scenes Orson Welles manipulates in an attempt to create Kane as a darker character. When Kane is a young man running his newspaper business he signs what he calls a "Declaration of Principles" where he swears to tell nothing but the truth and support the working man. Normally this would be a cause for the viewer to emotionally connect with Kane and applaud him for his ideas. However, Orson Welles juxtaposed that scene with a scene prior to it depicting Kane's blackmailing and unethical information gathering techniques and downright lies. In addition during the scene Kane is cast in shadow making it seem as if he had a darker purpose and meant solely to trick the public. Kane also forces Susan to become an opera singer. The ruthlessness of this is shown when the viewer is allowed to empathize with Susan for a moment as she stares out in terror at a gaping black hole of an audience. That scene was so powerful because it was low key lighting with high contrast between the black audience and the glaring lights and though it was not a subjective shot it showed a similar composition to what Susan would be seeing. Something that I did not catch, but was still an important aspect of the movie was a musical motif where the same music was played at Kane's newspaper party, his theme song for his election campaign, and when he courts Susan. The music is slightly different, sometimes more melancholy than others. Welles is superb at manipulating the cinematic elements to make Kane seem like a more devious person and stress several characteristics that Welles wanted to associate with William Randolph Hearst.

Art of Film Introduction

Film is a very interesting medium for portraying ideas and story lines. Unlike books and other written sources, film presents a visually to play on the emotions of the reader. With written media there can be discrepancies on how one visualizes situations, but with film the discrepancies come into play when one interprets the situation. Directors can manipulate how viewers see their films by emphasizing different aspects of their film through various film making techniques.

Though many language arts classes touch on how to interpret film and other visual media, none go into much detail. The Art of Film class is designed to explain how directors achieve their various affects and how one can be an "active" movie viewer, instead of a passive witness.