Citizen Kane
...providing the grounds for theatrical techniques and developments to be acquired and used to create perhaps the best film of all time, Citizen Kane. Welles is considered to be a director ahead of his time and with the combined efforts of himself as co-writer and Mankiewicz they created a pioneering film, an emotional chronology liberated from the confines of time and space.
Citizen Kane is a film created in 1941, based on the life of publisher William Randolph Hearst, an icon of his time, and his rise and fall from power. Citizen Kane has a complex theme and a circular or spiral-like structure in which more depth is acquired each time the movie passes over Charles Foster Kane's life. Also, Citizen Kane relies heavily on style and visuals, making use of camera, style, techniques and lighting to portray Kane's rise and fall from power, as well as the utilisation of swift montage sequences, allowing abrupt ellipses of time and space.
At the beginning and the conclusion of the film the audience is faced with the foreboding "NO TRESPASSING" sign and the black wire fence behind it. This long shot of Xanadu sends a message of hostility and concealment to the audience. As the film moves on the viewers are made aware of the death of Charles Foster Kane and his intimate, personal dying word rosebud', pushing the viewers to question what this must mean. Which is basically what the plot for the film is an attempt to peel back the layers of Kane's life and depict the fundamental truth of Charles Foster Kane.
The film's slow pace permits Welles to reconstruct the life and times of Kane so that the audience begins to care for and emphasise with Kane, this is why the search for Rosebud and, therefore, the meaning of Kane's life and actions, are conveyed through memories and flashbacks triggered by Thompson, the reporter for "News On The March", in the minds of those closest...
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