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Cinema In The 20th Century: Mise-En-Scene Analysis

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Cinema in the early 20th century evolved in many ways. The addition of sound, the development of the Production Code Administration to view films before release, and the development of many new and exciting modernizations in how cinema was produced, viewed, and discussed. In the mid 20th century the motion picture Citizen Kane challenged the traditional narrative and technical elements of classic Hollywood cinema. Citizen Kane challenged the traditional narrative by use of story telling and flashback as well as new technical elements such as the use of deep focus, also known as Mise-en-Scène, to shoot many scenes within the film and the wipe motion to change scenes within the film (Barsam & Monahan, 2013). The following will discuss the …show more content…

The composition of the scene, such as the relationship of the actors to one another and the spacing of each scene are all as important to the story as every other detail in the scene (Barsam & Monahan, 2013). In the film Citizen Kane an example of this design and composition can be demonstrated by the scene in which Kane is yelling at his wife, the failed opera singer. In one such scene there is an argument between the two characters about materialism. The wife only wants love from her husband and all he is willing to do is buy her love. The use of light and dark and shadow in the scene help illustrate the two sided of their argument (Welles, …show more content…

This use of motion to change from one scene to the other conveyed to the audience a change in time or scene. This technique worked well with the other elements used in the film, especially since there was not direct timeline and instead a story telling and flashback approach was used. The wipe motion allowed for the audience to know when one scene or time period ended and the next scene or memory/time began. An example of where the wipe motion was very effectively used during one of the opera scenes to move the audience from the operat performance to the audience at the opera and their reactions to the performance (Welles,

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