Citizen Kane Character Analysis

Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane tells the story of Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) and his rise to power and his downfall. With this rise and fall of power comes an overarching theme of control of others, or their inability to control. This portrayal of power is shown through numerous aspects of the film. A specific element used constantly in the movie is depth of composition. In clip 1, the film utilizes depth of composition to demonstrate who controls the power. Throughout most of the clip, the characters seen in the shot are almost lined up in the order of who has most control in the situation. When you see Mr. Thatcher (George Coulouris), Kane’s mother (Agnes Moorehead) and Kane’s father (Harry Shannon) in the room discussing what they’re going to do about Kane’s future, the mother is appeared closest to the camera, followed by Mr. Thatcher in the chair behind her, then the father on the outside of the room, and finally Kane seen from the window playing outside. These characters’ placement in the shot demonstrates the amount of control they have in the situation; the mother was the owner of the mine, thus the holder of the wealth, Mr.

The use of depth of composition in this clip is slightly different from the other two clips. In this clip, Kane is portrayed in a long shot for most of this scene, and when you see him interact with Susan Kane (Dorothy Comingore) he is in front of her during the shot and is seen mostly behind her by a considerable distance. This distance between characters shows the disconnect of their relationship, but also alludes to his loss of control of his wife since she eventually leave to go back to New York despite Kane’s wishes. This loss of control gives this movie a diamond effect to the character development of Charlie Kane because he had no power in the beginning of his life, and also had no control toward the