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What Is The Opening Sequence Of Citizen Kane: Film Noir

Decent Essays

When the film Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles, was released on September 5, 1941 the industry in Hollywood was churning out mass quantities of musicals, westerns and dramas. Citizen Kane, a precursor of film noir, used a variety of film elements, including the technique known as “deep focus” to produce the biopic of magnate Charles Foster Kane through the eyes of the journalist assigned to decipher the meaning behind Kane’s last word, “Rosebud”.
Director Jean-Luc Godard’s remark that “a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order” (Barsam & Monahan, p. 453), is a result of Welles handling of the story line in Citizen Kane. Many people were confused by the purposefully erratic time line and the theater centric look of the film that was achieved by deep focus cinematography which allows for the entire scene to be in complete focus, like a theater stage.
Nine sequences with flashbacks and a non-sequential plot order, which was “radical for its time” (Barsam & Monahan, p. 141) were used to tell the nonlinear story of the life of Charles Foster Kane. The first sequence is his death; the second sequence is his life in chronological documentary form, similar to a newsreel, the third sequence introduces the journalist Mr. Thompson, who has been given the assignment to suss out the meaning of Kane’s last word, “Rosebud”. Mr. Thompson’s task sets the order of the remaining movie sequences; each of his five interviews with those closest to Kane, gives a different perspective on his larger than life existence (Barsam & Monahan, 2016). Mis-en-scène or staging is the “overall look and feel of a film, using pre-set devices to tell the story” (Barsam & Monahan p 397). Citizen Kane’s rich in cinematic devices large and small to tell this story and engage the audience. During the lavish party scene at the newly acquired office of the Inquirer, Kane dances with exuberance, a stark contrast to his older self, while his friends Leland and Bernstein (actors Joseph Cotton and Everett Sloane respectively) struggle to talk over the music. You can see Kane’s reflection in the large window in and alternate angel shot during this conversation, his frenetic energy a conscious tool to

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