Citizen Kane: Classic Hollywood Cinema

Citizen Kane (1941) made significant contributions and cinematic advances on many fronts. It challenged traditional narratives as well as various technical elements of classic Hollywood cinema in its use of deep focus technique. Deep focus is a technique whereby everything has been incorporated in the frame as opposed to focusing only at the foreground. “Combination of lighting, type of camera lens, and composition, all designed to come up with the most desired focus, are the major focus of the cinematographer” (Cameron, 2008, p 218). This allows filmmakers to showcase several overlapping actions. The physical environment where the shooting is done also becomes very critical. The use of deep focus has provided a lot of insights into stage trainings that have enabled actors to become firmly placed in every scene. There is a perfect combination of acting techniques and cinematography. Apart from the deep focus

“This presents a unique approach that has collectively challenged the usual character presentation” (Kolker, 2009, 331). The audience identifies more with the characters who portray a more realistic image of the known human environment. The creative storytelling technique employed by Citizen Kane , whereby the biographical film realistically portrays a long time period, and this allows characters to age in the progress of the story. The story is narrated in overlapping segments, as opposed to being a more chronological and linear narrative. “There is more information being added with each narrator contributing his or her part of the story” (Cameron, 2008, p 341). The use of flashback has also been identified as another innovative approach that was introduced to the art of storytelling. Despite the usage of flashback techniques in traditional narratives, Citizen Kane used them more effectively and made them look more