How Did Citizen Kane Achieve The American Dream

The American Dream is that anyone can gain success through hard work, no matter your status, or if you're poor, or your gender, or anything of your background. Citizen Kane shows the dark side by emphasizing the reality of who can achieve the American Dream. Charles Foster Kane was a rich white male who was able to achieve greatness in power and wealth. There is no denying that he did put work in, but you cannot ignore that his background contributed a lot towards his success. For instance, in one scene, Thatcher is telling Kane that he is losing $1 million dollars a year. Kane responds by saying at that rate, he would need to close down is 60 years. By putting this scene in, it shows the amount of privilege Charles possesses. To the general

Normally, films will use shallow focus in order to show importance. This was not the case for Citizen Kane. In this film, they used deep focus to show importance to multiple figures. This can be difficult because mise-en-scene becomes so much more important since the audience can clearly see everything. Also, the director has to strategically use deep focus in order to convey information to the audience without leaving the audience confused. For instance, in a scene where Charles Kane’s mother is making an agreement with a banker, Thatcher, to send Charles Kane away to study, along with details about the wealth she had acquired from having a gold mine under her name. In this scene, Mrs. Kane, her husband, and Thatcher are having a discussion on legal matters over the acquired wealth and Charles Kane. While most would use shallow focus to guide the audience to centralize on this conversation, Welles and Toland decided to use deep focus in order to also show Charles Kane playing outside in the snow. This was used to show that he has no control of what is going on, while Mrs. Kane, who is closest to the camera, has most of the power over this