Citizen Kane is an iconic movie that changed the way Classical Hollywood cinema was viewed. This film had such a high expectation around it when it was first released in 1941. Citizen Kane was surrounded with various rumours of the movie being based on the real life story of the famous newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. However it was never clarified by Orson Welles that the movie was actually about Hearst so the movie could not just be branded a biographical movie. The genre of this film was hard for film critics and viewers to decipher. The closest description of a genre for this film would have to be a journalistic investigation biographical film. This allows for the mystery, the journalistic and the biographical elements which …show more content…
The realism of Kane in the film shows how in the end all he really cared about was his mother. She was the only women he really loved. The snow globe was a symbol of his childhood, arguably the only time in his life when he was ever truly happy. This brings about a sad realism that Kane was just an ordinary man who craved for the love of his mother but it was cruelly taken away from him. The camera movement and shots create the many illusions which make up Citizen Kane. The moving camera creates a sense of omniscience (lecture notes). The way in which the camera moves towards things and the use of cranes and tracks gives the anticipation that the secrets of Kane’s character might be revealed (Bordwell and Thompson, 2003). The way that it can appear to go straight through solid walls and window panes makes the audience feel like they can see everything that is happening from every direction, almost like being in the room with the characters. The use of dissolves and the, whip pans and cuts also enforce the sense of omniscience (lecture notes). These effect can be seen in the scenes which show the deterioration of Kane’s first marriage with Emily Norton. The dissolves and cuts allow the audience to understand and see how both characters begin to distance themselves from each other. The tension between the two of the characters is easily seen just by the use of dissolves, whip pans and