Essay On Citizen Kane

Orson Wells’ film Citizen Kane received terrific reviews as soon as it opened in 1941. While the average movie buff would not value Citizen Kane as much, for the critics, directors and film students: it provides a technical handbook as to the nuts and bolts of how a film is to be assembled. It has now been chosen as the greatest American film in a number of polls due to the many remarkable scenes and performances, cinematic and narrative techniques and experimental innovations in photography, editing and sound.

Citizen Kane is a 114-minute film school providing lessens after lessons in deep focus and rear projection, extreme close-ups and overlapping dialogue. Although appearing as a biographical movie (Biopic), it refused to follow the conventional

The film uses a mournful music when Kane announces his death, the trumpets in celebrating his life, loud crowd at the rally and echoes of loneliness in his home when his loved ones have gone.

8. Classic Hollywood movies had no ceilings as the lamps needed to light the scene were hung above the sets. Citizen Kane used a cloth canopy to simulate presence of an actual ceiling.

9. Most of the actors in Citizen Kane had never been in a movie. They has appeared on stage and on radio and lacked the conventions of traditional Hollywood culture.

10. Excellent Editing: There are many examples of extraordinary editing in the film, such as the brilliant summation of entire life of Kane's marriage in fifteen seconds.

Before Citizen Kane, filmmaking was easily predictable and virtually all the movies used the same stagnant camera angles, same lighting, and similar sets. Citizen Kane broke all the settled rules and introduced exceptional storytelling and Cinematography methods to the Hollywood.

"Fifty years later. Citizen Kane is as fresh, as provoking, as entertaining, as funny, as sad and as brilliant as it ever was. Many agree it is the greatest film of all time. Those who differ cannot seem to agree on their candidate."

- Film Critic Roger