Citizen Kane: A Cinematic Classic Hollywood Cinema

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Citizen Kane by Orson Welles is a cinematic classic, released in 1941. Citizen Kane challenged traditional narrative and technical elements of classic Hollywood cinema. Kane was narrated by several people that include their take on Kane’s life. The story unfolds by many flashbacks and is told by different perspectives over the years through different narrations. Charles Foster Kane was a millionaire, head of newspapers and died saying “rosebud”. The story focuses on telling about Kane but is about a reporter trying to seek what and why his last words meant. A reporter, Thompson was trying to seek why Kane’s last words were rosebud and what it was. The reporter interviewed people such as Mr. Jedediah Leland who was his friend until he was fired from the newspaper after transferring to Chicago to take care of that newspaper. Jedediah was fired after he was found to be face down on his typewriter writing a review of Susan and her horrific performance. Kane’s …show more content…

The background and everything in frame was focused in the screen shot. This technique is combined with lighting and camera lenses to produce this effect on scene. The scene starts out the movie by showing Charlie playing in the snow outside while Thatcher meets with Charles’s mom to sign guardianship to him inside the house. The mise -en- scene is able to utilize the whole focus of scene and explain the story. An innovation that cinematic technique was developed was the wipe which allows the one image to be moved off screen to another. The movie overlaps the interviews to tell the life story of Kane while the flashbacks are doing the storytelling. The story is not told in chronologic manor, uses several techniques to tell the story of Kane. The angles used to portray certain scenes, getting all of views in, having lighting changes, shadows are all creative to the movie and introducing these techniques into Hollywood