Assignment task:
- Cinematographer
- Gregg Toland
- Original Screenplay
- Herman Mankiewicz & Orson Wells
- Theme
- Power
Orson Welles' masterpiece, a debut made when he was only 25 years old, seems as astonishing a feat today as it did in 1941. The camera and editing alone showed filmmakers the way ahead, and facets of it are copied even today. Very few of the techniques of the past are left unused either, so this was a remarkable fusion of the old and the new.
Yet the film is so tightly constructed that there is absolutely no slack in it, and the tale of Citizen Kane's life, moving from obscurity to fame, from birth to death, is a consistently fascinating treatise on how one life can influence others and how power corrupts. The fact that Welles played Kane as well as directing is astonishing, but the deep-focus cinematography of Greg Toland and the writing of Herman Mankiewicz were almost equally important. Filmmaking is a collaborative effort and we should always remember that, even when paying our respects to such a genius as Welles.
Citizen Kane enabled the spectator not only to look at a make-believe world, but to see once again, so to speak, the frame as a constructed image: to take delight not only from stories, but from the virtuosity and splendor of cinematic art.
Francois Truffaut said that Citizen Kane is the film that "probably started the largest number of filmmakers on their careers."
Prompt.
In three paragraphs discuss the following queries
Discuss what is the effect of a story being told in flashback. Some episodes are related more than once by different people. Do the different versions of events contradict each other? Is there any significance to who tells what?
Next, the drama of Kane is driven by the reporter Thompson's search for the meaning of Kane's dying word: Rosebud. Ultimately, the camera reveals to the audience what the word refers to and thereby puts into our possession what no one in the story knows. What is the point of revealing the secret in this way?
Is Rosebud just a gimmick (a McGuffin) that drives the plot but means little in itself or has it a more important significance? Is the narration making a lyrical comment on the action? Or is it subjective, a glimpse into the dying man's mind or vision? In three paragraphs argue one position.