The movie begins with a choker (close up) shot of a news article announcing Kane's death and also shows a few flashback moment of his life. There is a choker shot of Kane's mouth saying "Rosebud" as he is dying and then focuses on his hand and the snow globe as it drops. As the reporter begins his investigation there also is another choker shot of Kane's house of a "No Trespassing" sign. In this scene there was also extra-diegetic music as they showed different angles of Kane's house. The music gave an eerie feeling to the film at first. The director also used match editing in this scene as the window was in he same place in every angle of the house.
There are also a lot of deep focus shot in this movie. For example in the house when Kane was a boy, his parents are talking in the foreground while we can clearly view him playing outside in the snow in the background. Open frame shots we also used in this scene to make the viewer feel as if they were in the home too.
Throughout the movie there were different camera shots such as medium-two shots, tracking shots, point-of-view shots, medium shots and long shots. There were also many lighting techniques such as key lights, rim lights, and back lights. For example of a fill light, the lighting was placed solely on the book when the reporter was looking for a Rosebud reference.
This film review that I read was called Citizen Kane (1941) and it described the movie as a fresh, sophisticated, and classic masterpiece. I agree with how this review compared the camera techniques to that of Hitchcock with the long shots and deep focus shots. Overall I think the movie was pretty good but it really took too long to answer the question of who/what was Rosebud. But I'd definitely watch it again.
Even though Citizen Kane was a good movie, I had a hard time enjoying it and relating to it because it took until the very last minute to tell us the mystery of what/who Rosebud was, as you had mentioned above. I thought the lighting in this movie was very revealing- for example when Mr. Thompson, the reporter, was reading the journal of Leland(?) and the only light you could see was illuminating from the book. Several other scenes showed a person illuminated only by a window either from the roof or on the side of the building which also caused an eerie feeling when only part of the person's face was visible. I think the deep focus shots, the lighting and the extra diegetic music made the film unique and memorable.
ReplyDeleteSasha, in your second to last paragraph you list a lot of different kinds of shots, and I wish you had given us some examples of those shots like you did in the paragraphs before it.
ReplyDeleteIn response to both you and Emily, I don't think we ever really know the answer to the question of what Rosebud it. We know it's a sled, but what does the sled mean? If you look at the textbook p. 35 about the cinematic sign, we can think of the word "rosebud" as a signifier. But we don't know what the signifier means, so the whole movie is like a mystery story with a reporter trying to find out the significance or meaning of the word which he hopes will reveal the secret of Kane's character. At the end what we get is really the referent -- the thing that the signifier refers to, but we are left guessing about the signified (the larger meaning.) The sled is just another signifier, whose meaning we want to know. And of course, the referent (the sled) reminds us of the very beginning of the movie, so in a sense, the end of the movie takes us back to the beginning of the movie. And we are reminded that the meaning of the signifier (rosebud/sled) depends on the context of many other signifiers. As your textbook explains, the meaning of a word or image depends on all the word/images before and after it. So, the sled's signicance takes on a richness of meaning because of all the stuff that happens between the beginning and the end, and the symmetry of the movie that would seem to give us closure actually doesn't because we are aware that the whole system of signs that the movie is is still incomplete. It's that incompleteness that gives the narrative its movement and makes the movie a classic. If the answer to the question were clear, the movie would be boring.
--Steve