Lecture 2 - Citizen Kane

A. Narrative

Narrative segments of Citizen Kane:

1. Deathbed scene (opening)
2. Newsreel
3. Bernstein’s narrative
4. Leland’s narrative
5. Susan’s narrative
6. Raymond the butler’s scene
7. Closinig scene

A1. The Quest Narrative

• Refers to Reporter Thompson’s quest for the meaning of Kane’s final words, “Rosebud”.
• Functions as a Frame Narrative

A2. The “Jigsaw Puzzle” Narrative

A2-i. The Jigsaw Puzzle

• The Jigsaw puzzle is a major motif in Citizen Kane

  "... playing with a jigsaw puzzle" - Thompson
  

• Like Thompson, viewer watching Citizen Kane is also “playing with a jigsaw puzzle”, piecing together the pieces that make up Charles Foster Kane
• 2 possible options:
  • Do the different pieces add up to form a complete picture of Kane and reveal his identity?
  • Or is there a missing piece?

A2-ii. Kane the chameleon

• The different accounts of Kane are shifting or conflicting
• We thus don’t get a clear picture of Kane’s true identity

  E.g. In the newsreel, Kane is portrayed as Communist, a Fascist, and an American
  

A3. Rosebud: the Missing Piece?

A3-i. Diegesis in Citizen Kane

A3-ii. What is Rosebud

To Kane:

• Object associated with childhood
• Object associated with Kane’s childhood, family and a time when he was truly free, innocent and happy
• Invokes feelings of nostalgia in Kane for such a time
• Also a signifier of irrecoverable loss

Beyond Kane:

• Reflects the radical privacy of experience
• There are some things in our experience that are radically private that only we know of, and can’t be shared with anyone else
  E.g. Death, the loss of childhood and innocence
• Kane’s experience of his tragic loss remains private and cannot be shared with others

B. Interpreting Citizen Kane

B1. Tragedy

Summary

The film’s aim is to represent how Kane, despite his wealth, power and fame, is a pitiful, pathetic and hollow figure who lost and never received love, and who has no love to give.

Welles uses visual means to convey this idea.

1. A Tragic Figure

• The film depicts Kane as a tragic figure who undergoes a deeply traumatic event in his childhood
• This continues to scar (and control?) Kane for the rest of his life
• The powerful and arrogant Kane is ultimately a pitiful, wounded figure whom the viewer feels sorry for
• Film references the tragedy genre, inviting us to see the fall of a great man to a pitifully broken one

"You know, all the same, I feel kind of sorry for Mr Kane."
- Thompson, to Susan

• Pathos in Citizen Kane: People far removed from Kane still feel sorry for him

2. Child Kane

• Adult Kane: still caught in childhood rebellion
• Either a victim, feeling the wound of abandonment
• Fighting to regain control, becomes domineering
• Trying to win love (runs for Governor to win the love of voters)
• Kane smashing things up in Susan’s room

Background

• In a twist of fate, Mrs Kane comes into a large fortune (The Colorado Lode)
• Separation from family: the deeply traumatic event in Kane’s childhood, continues to impact his entire adult life
• The Abandonment results in:
  1. Loss of love
  2. Loss of control

B1-i. The Loss of Love

• Wrenched from his mother
• Raised by Thatcher (cold figure)
• Raised without love and thus has no love to give

B1-ii. The Loss of Control

• Adult Kane compensates by trying to regain control
• Results in domineering posture towards others

  E.g. Towards Susan, the music teacher, the masses
  

Kane becomes a loveless person, and as an adult, all his actions are, if unconsciously, motivated by a desire to recover his lost love

E.g. Kane championing the interests of the readers of The Inquirer, or that of the voters (as he runs to be elected governor)

B1-iii. Recovering Love and Control

"The people will think, what I tell them to think." - Kane

• A tragic, inescapable selfishness and egoism mark all his “noble” actions ``` E.g.
  • The Declaration of Principles
  • Motifs of Kane’s name and the “K” insignia -> omnipresent ego ```
• Actions are unconscious acts of compensation influenced by childhood loss
  • Building Xanadu
  • Choosing Susan over Emily
  • Title “Citizen Kane”
  • Wooing the love of the masses
  • Becoming domineering and over-controlling (to compensate for the childhood loss of control)
  • Defensiveness:

    E.g. "No Trespassing", "If the world rejects me, I will build my own world"
    

    "Love. That is why he did everything. That’s why he went into politics. It seems we weren’t enough. He wanted all the voters to love him too. All he wanted out of life was love. That was Charlie’s story." - Leland
    

Building Xanadu

• Related to his loss of and attempt to regain control
• He has absolute control in Xanadu
• Built after he fails to get the world to accept Susan’s singing career: a childish reaction/spite

Choosing Susan over Emily

• Susan is closer to his mother
• Susan has working class roots
• Emily is upper class
• Kane is trying to recover his mother through this relationship

Title “Citizen Kane”

• Contrasts with his persona as a rich, powerful mogul

B1-iv. Past Haunting the Present

1. Kane’s confrontation with Gettys
2. Kane pleads with Susan not to abandon him

Visual representation e.g:
- Kane shown at the end of the corridor -> deep focus
- Kane appears very small, needy, childish figure after the abandonment -> irony

• Second abandonment by a “mother figure”

  Please don't go. You musn't go. You can't do this to me. - Kane
  

• Kane behaves like a child, wrecking the room
  • Wrecking of the well-furnished room
  • Kane rebels against the material wealth he has been given

    Kane’s true identity is that of the broken child who has been unconsciously striving all his life to compensate for the loss of love and control he experienced in his childhood

• Only by pure chance that he realizes this true loss:
  Discovery of the snow globe

The Snow Globe

• Provides a visual link to the past, to Rosebud and his lost childhood
• Moment of epiphany/clarity and truth
• Sees what he’s been looking for all this while but never realized what, and can ultimately never attain

The Snow Globe and Kane’s Death

• All he has in his hand is the snow globe (none of his other worldly possessions)
• Kane, on his deathbed, reckons with his lost childhood: does he achieve any form of closure?
• Radical Privacy of Experience:
  • Snow globe is a self contained diorama of his inaccessible childhood/mini-world known only to Kane
  • Irony: The most powerful man in America, but all he can do on his death bed is cling to a snow globe

B2. The Unknowability of the Human Self

• The film posits the idea that the human self is ultimately unknowable
• The self is too complex and multifaceted

  I don't think any word [Rosebud] can explain a main's life. - Thompson
  

B2-i. Unknowable Kane

• We are missing pieces in our knowledge of another person (Kane)
  • Kane is generally only conveyed to us through other characters
  • We only see Kane directly in the opening scene, on his death bed
    • Presented as a mysterious, unknowable figure
    • Welles showing us Kane only in fragments
• Even Kane does not know himself fully(?)

• Kane made up of multiple selves

  E.g. Multiple reflections of Kane in the mirrored hallway
  
  (1) Mirrors show multiple/infinite personae
  (2) Dissolves into multiple illusions   -> can’t tell the real Kane and the
                                             reflection apart
  (3) All about him                       -> egotism, unable to connect with others
  (4) He doesn’t look at the mirror       -> unable to recognize himself(?)
  (5) Scene ends with a slight tracking towards emptiness (after Kane moves out of shot)
  

C. Film-making in Citizen Kane

C1. Motifs

C1-i. Kane framed as small

• Boarding house scene

• Susan leaves Kane

C1-ii. Other Motifs

• Forward and Upward investigative camera movement
• House and windows

C2. Cinematography

Definition: All the manipulations of the film strip by the camera in the shooting phase and by the laboratory in the developing phase.

• Photography of the mise-en-scene
  • How the camera is handled during the shooting phase
  • How the film is treated during the film development phase

C2-i. Framing

Static vs Mobile

• Mobile Framing can be seen as camera movement
  • Crane shot
  • Pan shot
  • Tilt shot

Camera Distance

• Extreme close-up

Citizen Kane (dir. Orson Welles)

• Close-up

Citizen Kane (dir. Orson Welles)

• Medium shot

Greed (dir. Erich von Stroheim)

• Long shot

Gospel According to St. Matthew (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini)

• Extreme long shot

Greed (dir. Erich von Stroheim)

Camera Angle

• High-angle shot
• Low-angle shot

Citizen Kane (dir. Orson Welles)

C2-ii. Focus

Deep Focus

Definition: Both distant and close planes, i.e. all planes, are kept in sharp focus by use of a wide-angle lens, has great depth of field

• Widely used in 1940s
• Major aspect of Welles’ film style in Citizen Kane ``` E.g.
  1. Boarding House scene
  2. Shot of Kane’s mountainous possessions in Xanadu
     • Does not direct viewer’s attention to angle singular point of focus
     • Meant to take in the whole shot ```

Selective Focus

• Gospel According to St. Matthew

• Citizen Kane (Susan’s attempted suicide scene)

C2-iii. Duration of Image

Long Takes

Definition: A shot that lasts for a significant duration

• The long take can be conceived as a single unit with its own internal logic
• Contributes to immersion

Boarding House scene in Citizen Kane

• Long take enables Welles to show how from being a free subject, Kane becomes an object managed by bank.
• Enables us to see this traumatic transition in Kane’s life within the same shot
  • See both a brief glimpse of freedom, and the loss of that freedom, in the same shot
• Walkthrough of scene:
  • Starts with a dissolve transition from text on the page
  • Graphic match:

Black text on white paper -> Kane standing out against white snow
Kane alone but truly happy with a single childhood toy

vs

Xanadu scene: Kane is surrounded by possessions but empty inside

• As the camera tracks back through the window, Kane becomes an object in the distance dwarfed by the adults in the foreground

Mother in the foreground  -> most powerful
Father in middle ground   -> less powerful
Kane in background        -> least powerful

• Irony counterpoint between foreground and background
  • Deed being signed on foreground to separate Kane from parents
  • Kane (playing soldiers in the Civil War) shouting “Union forever” in the background

C3. Sound in Citizen Kane

E.g. Susan and Kane in Xanadu
Echoey voices -> underscores great distance between them