Citizen Kane – One Of The Greatest Works Of Cinema
Citizen Kane is an America biography genre film, written, stared, directed, and produced by Orson Welles in 1941. It is both a narrative and dramatic masterpiece. This is the greatest film and one of the most engaging and memorable pictures of all time. Because the film’s black and white cinematography proves that the best pictures are the ones that tell a good story. The film has a sensational noir look and feels, because of the use of high contrast lighting and shadows. The aesthetic inspiration and the technological innovation both go hand in hand and they both support the entire film style, story, and theme. Reasons, why this movie is the greatest of all time are the following.
Firstly, as a young man, Orson Welles flawlessly plays and abducts the spirit of Charles Foster Kane, and he also delivers a compelling act as an old empty man. The rest of the characters are satisfactory, as there are no other distinct performances than Orson Welles' cast, Kane. What is so proficient about Kane is its uncertainty. We are not sure if Kane trust in the beliefs that he declared. While he decides to himself on top of the world, he loves the fondness of the ordinary people in general. This is represented by his ruthless, and condescending love for a chorus girl, Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore).
The second reason the film produced a lot of competitions was that the main cast, Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), starred different analogies with real media big shot and newspaper person William Randolph Hurst. Hence, the movie was depicting the life, survival, complications and personal relationships of an actual person thus dramatizing his life. However, the director (Orson Welles) made use of plenty long takes in this movie. It is one of the most effective films ever made because it is made up of a lot of visual symbolism, every clip is filled with a lot of small significant stylistic touches. He produced it with practical and artistic inspiration which was 2 decades in the lead of its time and was considered as a huge accomplishment at the period of its subsequent release after the American Film Noir era in the 1950's. His most famous aesthetic creations are; the low angled camera movements, deep focus shots and depth of field, long uninterrupted shots, extreme facial close-ups, overlapping dialogue, giving a realistic effect to conversations, subjective camera angles, flashbacks and the shady lighting that cook up most of the movie. All this and more establishes why the movie is so successful. Nevertheless, we must not neglect the extraordinary score by Bernard Herrmann. It was his first movie score. Furthermore, the superb photography of Gregg Toland regarding Welles's unique eye on details. After all, he wanted to put in each shot everything the human eye can see if they were present. On the contrary, I don’t like the fact that the story is slow compared to today's standards, and there is no real Hearst character alive today in which to relate. So yes, the story on its surface is outdated.
In conclusion, Citizen Kane is not just one of the great works of cinema it is one of the greatest artistic creations of the century. It is the America cinema. Orson Welles is brilliant as both director and actor, the movie production was fantastic, and it has a satisfying end, in those plumes of smoke going up into the night sky.
