Citizen Kane: Film Vs Classical Hollywood Film

From time to time, a movie comes along that breaks the mold of what a movie is suppose to be. It takes the audience to a new level on what is possible and how the story can be told in a completely different light, both figuratively and literally. In 1941, Olsen Welles accomplished this feat with his groundbreaking film “Citizen Kane”. Compared to many of the movies of the time, Citizen Kane’s narrative and technical aspects were dramatically different than the classical Hollywood cinema of the time. The differences in style can immediately be seen in the first few minutes of the film regarding the depth of focus used. Revolutionary at the time, Orson Welles used various filters and lighting to make all items within the frame in focus at the same time. This method of focus would later be called deep focus. (Barsam 240). Another new technique used was the idea called wiping for scene cutting. (Lewis 161) Having the main character of the scene walk from one side of the screen to the other

(Lewis 106) Citizen Kane challenged this idea on multiple levels throughout its film. In the beginning, the anti-hero protagonist drops a snow globe while saying the world “Rosebuds”. Initially, the audience begins the question what the word Rosebuds means as another character in the movie attempts to do the same. At the end of the movie, the audience begins to realize the question that they should be asking is not what Rosebuds means, but rather what Rosebuds means to the protagonists. The snow globe scene also incorporated a longer than normal scene without any cutting. This continuous filming resulted in a different type of scene selection and made the audience focus on the snow globe as it was focused in on. Additionally, the use of the snow globe throughout the film dramatically shifted the Mise-en-Scene of the