——Analysis of the movie "Citizen Kane"
"Citizen Kane", a film shot in 1941 during World War II, has been well-deserved as a god-like work and has become a classic business card in film history. Orson Welles, the film's director, co-star, screenwriter, and producer, seems to be a stranger to Hollywood, with his unusual conception of cinema, and the resulting "Citizen Kane" "Different from the narrative method of classic Hollywood, it has formed the image of a rebel artist in Hollywood in everyone's mind. Looking back at the film and evaluating the value of this film from the perspective of history, we can find that the biggest difference between the film and the classic Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s is that it does not belong to any type. In the golden age of Hollywood, when comedies, westerns, musicals, robber films and other "types of films" have matured and become popular, such a film that has no pattern to follow, a fusion of various styles is innovative and pioneering. Sex, the author's outstanding modernist film also seems to be a rebel, but it created a peak in film history and is still criticized to this day. The 2020 biographical film "Mank" directed by David Fincher with a high viewing threshold reflects the story created by the screenplay of "Citizen Kane". This article will analyze the three aspects of the film's narrative, the innovation in photography and the understanding of the film's theme.
Complex, advanced, unique narrative. "Citizen Kane" is complex and avant-garde in the film's narrative structure, and even today, it cannot be regarded as a popular work. In the film, a young reporter was commissioned by the media to investigate the meaning of the last words "Rosebud" left by the American newspaper tycoon, Kane, the protagonist of the film, at the Saunadu Manor. The process of growing up and making a fortune, how to create public opinion to make the United States involved in the war, the two marriages of the US President's niece Emily and the singer Susan, as well as the complex emotional relationship and failure in the presidential election, etc. Events were heard by reporters. After listening to a lot of stories, the reporter went into the library to check out the detailed information about Kane, and gained a new understanding of his childhood experiences and another side of him. In the narrative of the entire film, flashbacks, interludes, flashbacks and other techniques are used quite skillfully. The reality and the review of Kane are alternately interspersed with the narrative back and forth. Different from the closed-structure linear narrative mode adopted by the classic Hollywood period genre films, such a brand-new and groundbreaking narrative mode has achieved a breakthrough in the art of film narrative and provided a reference for subsequent world films.
A bold innovation in photographic techniques. In terms of the performance of the film style, the innovation in photography is very obvious and successful. Orson Welles systematically used depth-of-field lenses, low-cameras and moving lenses to shoot in the film, and used many photography techniques such as large depth-of-field, overhead shooting and backlight photography, which enriched and advanced the art of film language. The famous film theorist Bazin once believed that the depth of field shot was a crucial gain in the technique of mise-en-scene, and a major progress of dialectical significance in the development of film language, not just a formal progress. Take, for example, the most classic depth-of-field shot in the film where Kane is handed over to the banker. The large depth of field of the shot makes every character in the frame very sharp, starting with the mother closest to the camera, the banker and mother sitting on one side near the table, the two occupy half of the frame. Kane's father is standing on the left side of the frame, far from the camera, dressed in stark contrast to the two in front. Little Kane is outside the house, farthest from the camera, but the audience can still clearly see him playing happily on the snow, unaware of his future destiny and the impact of this incident on his life. The use of a large depth of field lens enhances the tension of the picture and makes the position of each character clear through the composition of the scene.
Rosebud, the forever missing piece of the puzzle, is where it all started. The thematic aspects of the film are rich and complex, and opinions vary. Originally titled "The American", Kane has a line in the film that says: "I am, was and will always be one kind of person - American." As if alluding to and like Kane Americans, the duality of the American Dream is reflected throughout Kane's life story. Kane, a newspaper tycoon, is a "successful man" with enormous wealth, but the contradiction between material success and failure in love reflects the true meaning of rosebuds. The grown-up Kane, after possessing huge wealth, the only thing missing is love, a mother's love, a family's love, a real love, a love that was missing, a love that cannot be filled. This is something Kane has always wanted but never got, and maybe that's what "Rosebud" means.
Orson Wilson's "Citizen Kane", such a black-and-white film 80 years ago, such a work with a high status in film history, in narrative structure, theme, camera movement, camera selection, sound, editing The transitions, lighting and even the sound were clearly different from the Hollywood genre films of the time. That's why people call directors the rebels of Hollywood. However, Orson Welles's practical exploration and development of film language, innovation in narrative mode and contribution to film aesthetics in the film made this rebellion a peak in the history of world film.
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