Emily Steffler

Blog 2 Citizen Kane

June 28, 2013

Film Analysis

            The film Citizen Kane was one of the best American drama films of the 1940’s. After seeing the movie it seems very interesting looking into all the details put into creating the film. The director and the main star are surprisingly the same person, Orson Welles.  Many of the scenes in the film show you all the different views that camera angles can give you and how different editing techniques affect the film. The film being presented in black and white also adds a layer to the scenes because in my personal opinion I feel like in black and white it is hard to capture the true meaning of a scene if it is not presented well to you through the camera angles and the editing techniques. To be able to come up with a great film you need to be able to analysis how a scene is going to look even before you film it, you have to be able to picture it in your head, and that takes true talent.

            The one scene is where a guy is just destroying the room, he destroys every thing, but the way the camera is very close to the ground, low angled shots, so you have to look up at the man destroying the stuff. The part makes you feel small and makes you feel the anger of the man. The shot uses a deep focus when it goes from focusing on the man to all of a sudden focusing on a snow globe on the shelf of one of the undestroyed units. The snow globe that is pictured above is the same one that the man had found peacefully resting on the shelf. The scene is just one of the ways that you can see all the thought put into directing this film.

             The extreme lighting in the film helps for the viewer to be able to tell all the different emotions flowing through the picture. The two pictures almost give you a chill when you look at them. Seeing the extreme lighting and the views that you are given, you feel as though there is something serious that is about to happen. The one shows a close up of a face, seeing the extreme contrast it is almost as if she is waiting for something serious to happen. The other one you can tell it is something serious, even though you can not see any of the faces, the far away picture and the wide camera angles show all the lines of the people being very straight and firm.  Also another aspect that really helped you to understand what the director was trying to get you to understand where all the editing techniques that he used. The main technique that stood out to me was all the flashbacks that he used. Using flashbacks I feel really helps to give a back story on the story you are trying to tell, it also helps you to connect different things and piece them together. Although sometimes if you are not paying attention flash backs can make watching a movie hard I feel that it gives a much greater depth to the film.

            After reading the review of Tim Derks on “Citizen Kane”, it really helped me get even more perspective on the film. In all films each person has there own way of interrupting the scenes.  Reading through the article it gives you someone one elses view on what they thought about the film. Seeing how in some cases you take the scene in the same way, where as in other ones you saw it in different ways. Film analysis I feel in many ways is based on the individual. Not everyone will look at a film the same way or see all the same things. One of the best ways to analysis a film I feel is to look into other peoples perspectives of how they saw individual scenes and slowly be able to pick up on more and more.