Citizen Kane

The camera work in this film seemed very obvious but subtle at the same time. A lot of this is because I watch movies so often that the camera trick don’t catch my attention really. Things like the camera angles to make Kane look much bigger and the reflections off shiny things (puddle, desk, etc.) seemed obvious, but the subtlety seemed more to be the purpose of these tricks. I understand why it helps to make Kane such an imposing character, but the reflections and moments when characters looked into the camera, though easy to spot don’t have an obvious purpose to me.

We were asked to look specifically at how deep focus was used, but honestly I didn’t notice it while I was watching the film. What I did notice was that I would spot little details in the background, then wait until they somehow became important. I’m so used to things I notice in the background being important details, usually because the filmmakers intended me to see it. In this film I noticed everything and none of it was relevant, which I found extremely annoying (especially since I completely forgot about the one tiny detail that did become important—the sled). Symbolically, I imagine this is important because every man’s life is full of tiny details and there’s no way to know what holds the most value.

The article said “the ‘message’ of the film, beyond being the mystery of Kane the character, is the mystery of reality or of life itself.” I would say this is an accurate way to sum up the film, but of course not the only way. We (as a society) usually approach the death of important figures in the same way—by trying to understand them by ferreting out all their secrets. With Kane, there were lots of unanswered questions and we never really got a true sense of the man except for how he was viewed by others. Arguably this is the truest way to know him because we aren’t influenced by his own biases, but we miss out on who he really was without his own input to his life story. Kane, and by extension any other person, remains in a shroud of mystery because there is no way of knowing the whole story, which is probably why the movie left me feeling unsatisfied. If audiences are able to recognize that you can’t understand a man (in this case Kane) through regular research, they would take the lesson and apply it to real life, making the mystery of Kane the mystery of life. Kane as an individual is largely irrelevant because he could really be anybody.

Something I still don’t understand is why there was someone screaming or laughing outside when Kane slapped Susan in the tent? I’m not sure how it was significant or even how it affected that single moment.