Anthony Uniejewski Blog on Citizen Kane

                I thought that Citizen Kane was a very long movie that seemed to be dragged out longer than it needed to be. Although the filming aspects of it were amazing the actual movie itself wasn’t the greatest. The image of the snow-globe really foreshadows what is to come in the movie even though the audience isn’t meant to figure it out until the very end of the movie. I didn’t realize the significance of it until he picked it up after he destroyed the room near the end. That is when it all came together for me. I was very disappointed in the end of the movie when they threw his sled that said “Rosebud” in the fire. I thought that scene could have come much sooner and the movie could have been much shorter than what it was.

                I read the review from “The New York Times” and it said “ground-breaking drama loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst which is frequently cited as the finest American film ever made”. I knew that it was the finest film ever made just from listening and watching all the required clips for class, but I didn’t think that it was loosely based on anything but an idea that Orson Welles had.

                The picture that has the super low angle shot is spectacular. Welles literally dug a hole in the floor of the studio just to get the angle for some shots. I picked up on the really low angles the first time I watched this film and I just thought it was a small camera placed on the ground. I clearly was wrong. This angle allowed for awesome establishing shots and intimidating low angles to show power. It seems like Welles was an extreme fan of the low and high angle shots.

                Another scene I want to talk about that no one has mentioned at all for this film is the scene when he has the party after he hires the most extraordinary men in the newspaper business. This scene really stood out to me for some reason. I noticed that when he was dancing with the girls that you could always see him dancing with them even with it cut away from him and went to Jed talking. The audience could see the reflection in the window and correct me if I am wrong but I believe that was a continuous shot just with two different cameras. So yes there had to be cuts but it was a constant flow of action in the scene that I thought was one of the best shots in the film.

                I can understand why this movie was voted best movie of all time for its filming aspects, but at the same time movies that have been coming out make this one look cheesy and uninteresting. I think it is because this film is what started a new age in film making, but again at the same time people are constantly changing the way they film their movies. Orson Welles was definitely a visionary of his time and had an eye for film.