Starting from Citizen Kane, the history of world cinema has entered the modern era. I will analyze the eternal artistic value of Citizen Kane from three main perspectives: narrative method, photography and lighting.
The film "Citizen Kane" uses reporters to interview Kane's relationship with him or his hatred to the bones, but they all have a deep understanding of Kane's life experience. The backlash of his wealth was alienated, and he did not get the story of the “rose bud” that was missing in his heart throughout his life. The rose bud was not found by the characters in the play, but the director revealed the mystery to the audience at the end of the film: the rose bud is a line carved on the protagonist’s favorite sleigh when he was a child. The sled when I was a child, the heavy snow in my memory, the embrace of my parents, and Susan's company are all missing pieces in Kane's life. From a standpoint, this movie is like a poem of lamenting about loss and a collection of meditations on money and wealth. After the United States experienced the blow of the Great Depression, such a discussion about what life is the most precious is of great epochal value, and this proposition is also the sword of Damocles that has hung over mankind for thousands of years. . So starting from the selection of materials, this movie is destined to be extraordinary.
The narrative method is "Citizen Kane"'s most daring and innovative attempt and breakthrough of tradition. The film chose to use the perspective of a journalist to objectively and rationally interview people Kane had close contact with during his lifetime. A complete mirror can only show one face of the protagonist, but the value of the multi-angle narrative of "Citizen Kane" is like a mirror that is broken and becomes countless small mirrors. Each mirror can reflect Kane's angle. On the side, with more and more mirrors, Kane's image gradually becomes three-dimensional. At the beginning of the film, a pan from top to bottom takes the audience into the castle built by Kane for his second wife. At the end of the film, a pan from below is used to take the audience away from the castle and also from Kane. Story of a lifetime
The development of the lens language is reflected in the use of the most cinematic deep-field lens in "Citizen Kane". Since Orson Wells is a stage actor, he has extremely high requirements for the movie set and the composition of the movie screen. This prerequisite gives "Citizen Kane" the premise of using deep depth of field-exquisite scene scheduling. For example, when Orson Wells was playing sledding in the snow outside the house in Kane, his parents and Thatcher were discussing the future of Kane in the house. Separate from the adults. Little Kane's framed outside the window symbolizes his helplessness and inability to do anything about his future and destiny. The director dispatched his weak father to the far left of the screen. His body is smaller than the other two in the screen, which symbolizes that little Kane's fate will be arranged by his mother and Thatcher. The advantage of a deep-field lens is that it has a sense of space, and the distance between the foreground, the middle and the background is stretched far. Secondly, the depth of field helps to accommodate more elements, which is conducive to show the relationship between different characters, such as the contrast between strength and weakness. The advantage of deep depth of field lies in its efficiency: often a longer lens can solve the narrative effect that needs to be cut multiple times under normal circumstances.
Lighting angle: From an overall point of view, in the first half of the film's description of Kane, who is dedicated to running a newspaper for the people, the director often uses high-profile photographic structures. White occupies the majority in black, white and gray. Multi-angle lighting is used to make the picture reflect the bright characteristics, which symbolizes the prosperity of Kane's career. In the second half of the period, after failing to run for governor in his career and suffering emotionally from the abandonment of two wives, he used less lighting and single-angle lighting to create a lot of shadows, rendering the tragedy color. From a microscopic point of view, in a small number of images, light is used to create symbolic meaning. In the footage of Kane signing the newspaper contract, Kane's face was clearly visible in the light at first, and then Kane walked forward into the shadows to complete the signing, symbolizing Kane's destiny that he would eventually be backfired by money.
There are few fast switchings in the edited movie. The only stylized treatment is when describing the story of Kane and his first wife, using shaky shots to connect Kane in different periods, from the beginning of love to Kane's hands. With their own newspaper, and the wife holding their rival's newspaper, the two have nothing to say. The director showed the changes in the relationship between Kane and his wife over the years in just two minutes. Their interior decoration is gradually enriched, their clothes are becoming more gorgeous, but their hearts are getting farther and farther away. There is also a matching editing: seamless editing from the photos of newspaper members to the photo scene. It took Kane twenty years to build this team, but the director only took one second. The efficiency of Orson Welles' narrative is vividly demonstrated through editing.
"Citizen Kane" is a turning point in the modernization of the film. Her eternal artistic value that transcends time shines like a jewel in the crown.
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