Film chapter 12 test 3

Prologue

1.Kane's death and dying word: "Rosebud."

Return visually to Prologue

10.Cast and credits

Newsreel

2.Condensed life of the man provides points of reference the viewer will need later

Premise

3."Rosebud, dead or alive;" Thompson, the viewer's representative, begins his mission to define Kane by discovering the meaning of his dying word.

Flashback

4.Thatcher's point of view 5. Bernstein's point of view 6.Jed Leland's point of view 7.Susan Alexander's point of view 8. Raymond's point of view

Coda

9.Rosebud revealed to audience only,

feminist

Additionally, Citizen Kane is WHAT in its portrayals of the three main female characters as victimized by men •Mary Kane protects her son from an abusive father, sacrificing all she loves •Emily Norton Kane portrays a faithful wife and mother, if a conventional one, whose husband abuses her trust •What about Susan Alexander Kane?

John Houseman and the Mercury Theater

Additionally, Welles had a theater background with WHAT in New York

FCC

As a result of the broadcast, Welles was called before the WHAT

move

As a young man, Kane himself is virtually always on the WHAT

defeat and exhaustion

By contrast, with age, Kane becomes less mobile, moves more slowly, sits more often—conveying a sense of WHAT

medium of film

Chapter twelve is a systematic analysis of one of the greatest accomplishments in the WHAT: Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) produced by RKO studios.

formalism

Citizen Kane is a masterpiece of WHAT •That contains elements of realism (deep-focus photography, the newsreel sequence) •Which is the work of an undisputable auteur and innovative, cinematic genius •That has a rich commercial and critical history •That sparked controversy from its beginning

flashback

Citizen Kane's story is told in a WHAT structure, from multiple points of view and in a particular sequence

staging action dynamically

Coming from the world of live theatre, Wells was an expert at WHAT.

language systems

Each chapter in Giannetti's Understanding Movies is devoted to one of the WHAT through which film can be analyzed

synthesizing many language systems

Film is a complex medium, WHAT at once

acting skills

Footage of Welles remains from those hearings and demonstrates his considerable WHAT as he convinces the committee that he had no idea anyone was taking the broadcast seriously

energy of youth

In Citizen Kane, the moving camera is generally equated with the vitality and WHAT

Fragmentation as a Motif in C.K.

It acts as a foil to the simple-minded idea that a single word can define a complex personality such as that of Kane's •It suggests multiplicity, repetition, and parts of a larger whole

authoritarianism

Kane is undone by his egocentric, WHAT.

mobility and energy

Kinetically, the camera movements equate with the character's mobility and energy WHAT

stationary

Mirroring his lethargy, the camera becomes more WHAT or static during these scenes

John Houseman

Not long after returning to America in 1933, Welles joined with aspiring theatrical producer WHO

Twenty-four year old

Orson Welles, coming from a background that included theater and radio, brought a unique dramatic vision to Hollywood

generalized symbol of loss

Rosebud is a convenient symbol of childhood innocence, but more importantly it is a WHAT. It is far more than an object.

single shot

The best way of understanding the complexity of Welles's mise en scene is to analyze a WHAT.

Ways Welles condenses time

The swish pan and cross-cuts that show the passage of years and the deterioration of Charles and Emily's marriage, all set at breakfast, cover years in about a minute of real time

Susan Alexander's

The visual editing of WHO nervous collapse (cont.) •As the light bulb dies out, a mechanical whirring sound winds down to silence •The next sound the audience hears is Susan's labored breathing as a result of an overdose meant to extinguish her own life

William Randolph Hearst

To say that Citizen Kane is based on the life of WHO(actually, it is a composite) and stop there would be to ignore the many layers that make the film not only visually complex but thematically multi-dimensional

Joseph Cotten

WHO as Kane's best friend, Jed Leland, the man who will always tell Kane the truth even when he doesn't want to hear it, who finally can't stomach what Kane has become

Agnes Morehead

WHO as Kane's mother in a brief, but memorable scene

Dorothy Comingore

WHO as Susan Alexander is at first naïve and a bit shy, but under Kane's thumb, she becomes at once a shrill annoyance and a pitiable victim of Kane's particular brand of love

Gregg Towland

WHO is the cinematographer of Citizen Kane.

Everett Sloane

WHO plays Bernstein, Kane's more than loyal employee, with humor, believability, and humanity

ease

Welles combines multiple editing styles and techniques with WHAT

Shakespeare

Welles favorite dramatist

visual meaning

Welles infused every frame with WHAT

sound montage

Welles is probably best known for perfecting WHAT in film

fifteen

Welles left school at WHAT, traveled to Europe, and there acted on the stage

prep school

Welles studied theater in a WHAT as a youth and directed and acted in numerous plays

aesthetic instincts

Welles' WHAT, of how form and content continually mirror one another, are profound and profuse throughout Citizen Kane.

rules

Young and confident, breaking all the "WHAT," Welles refused to limit exposition shots to mere filler—simply a way to advance plot

Herman Mankiewicz

the original author but ultimately credited only as co-author due to Welles's extensive revisions, denounced the film because it radically departed from the original screenplay

The Supporting Cast of Citizen Kane Includes

•Agnes Morehead as Kane's mother in a brief, but memorable scene •Joseph Cotten as Kane's best friend, Jed Leland, the man who will always tell Kane the truth even when he doesn't want to hear it, who finally can't stomach what Kane has become •Everett Sloane plays Bernstein, Kane's more than loyal employee, with humor, believability, and humanity •Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander is at first naïve and a bit shy, but under Kane's thumb, she becomes at once a shrill annoyance and a pitiable victim of Kane's particular brand of love

dominant; Union forever

•Charlie, in his final moments of boyhood play, is in the background, the smallest character in frame •Yet, he is the WHAT, the point of highest contrast and dynamic movement •Surrounded by snow and multiple frames within the frame, he ironically sings the "WHAT" as his mother signs documents, effectively ending the union of Charles' original family unit forever

Examples of Fragmentation as Motif in C K

•Jigsaw puzzles •Profusion of crates, art, sculpture, and "junk" •The structure of the film, with each narrator providing partial pieces or fragments of a larger picture •The hall of mirrors scene; Kane walks down a hall lined with mirrors on each side, his image fragmented, reflected, and multiplied into infinity. •Who is Kane? The mirrored images suggest that he is all of these fragmented images, a complex being, an enigma

C K: multiple ideological viewpoints

•Like Welles himself, the film can be classified as ideologically liberal •However, liberalism is implicit rather than explicit in the film •Kane is liberal and communal as a young man but moves to the right later in life, finally becoming authoritarian •He is relativist in his morality and secularist; he is never a traditionalist

Welles' use of crane shots

•Maneuvers the camera deftly descending into and ascending out of sets and different characters' perspectives, which . . . •Provides an effective and refreshing formalist transition compared to the typical classical establishing shot •Welles frequently used lengthy takes in his staging, choreographing the movements of the camera and the characters rather than cutting to a series of separate shots

War of The Worlds

•Orson Welles was no novice actor; his now famous 1938 Halloween radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' WHAT convinced and panicked a national audience

Citizen Kane is a film with

•Relatively few close-ups •Most of its images composed in depth, with characters frequently shifting positions from foreground to midground to background within the frame to reflect shifting power dynamics •Many tightly framed and closed form images

Welles condenses time

•Susan Alexander's nervous collapse leading to her eventual suicide attempt is presented in a frenetic thematic montage of opera sets, Susan in various costumes and settings, crowds, applause, etc. . . . •All periodically intercut with the image of an electric light bulb flickering, dimming, and finally burning out—a fitting metaphor for Susan herself

Citizen Kane: many motifs

•Technical motif: The low camera angles Content Motifs: •Series of fences, walls, fortresses between the audience and Kane •Stillness, decay, old age, and death •Fragmentation •Rosebud

smear campaign

•That was not widely recognized for its genius until many years after its release due to the WHAT against it led by William Randolph Hearst •That inspired many important filmmakers •That the world of cinema is richer for having and without which a noticeable gap in its history would surely be felt

ensemble players; never acted

•The cast of Citizen Kane, many of whom had acted previously with Welles at the Mercury Theater, were primarily a group of WHAT •Most had WHAT in movies before •Nevertheless, theirs are excellent performances

A few themes include

•The fall of a tragic hero •A critique on Capitalism and the arrogance of power •What Welles called "the lost paradise" •The dark side of humanity •The impossibility of absolute definition as applied to any individual human being •The infinite possibilities of subjectivity

Innovative use of Sound in Citizen Kane

•The visual editing of Susan Alexander's nervous collapse is accompanied by an equally frenetic aural montage of Susan's ü shrieking arias ü orchestral music ü popping flashbulbs ü and the percussive sounds of newspaper presses rolling, all seemingly battering away at Susan's frayed psyche

Rosebud

•To view the revelation of the missing piece of the puzzle, WHAT, as only a symbol of Kane's lost childhood is reductive •As is the case with every language system in Welles' Citizen Kane, Rosebud has many meanings and many layers

Orson Welles

•Used photographic techniques in ways that no one else ever had, creating layers to produce meaning •Employed deep-focus shots, angles, dramatic backlighting, dizzying crane shots, and special effects in profusion to give Citizen Kane its unique presentation of visual storytelling •Deep-focus shots utilize a wide-angle (short) lens.

the FCC hearing on War of the Worlds seminal broadcast:

•Welles said, had he known that anyone was taking it seriously, he would have stopped immediately •Welles, in fact, knew exactly what he was doing and refused to stop. At twenty-two, he immensely enjoyed the attention. No charges were filed against him.