Contrasting with Citizen Kane

Rating: Null/10 (31 October 2000)

Citizen Kane and Casablanca are two innovative films from the 1940's, yet they differ in genre and style. While Casablanca has a relatively straightforward love story complete with wartime propaganda, Citizen Kane has a narrative structure as a dialectical montage. Casablanca has depth of characters, themes of love, power, valor and sacrifice put together with straight narrative: Boy meets girl, boy looses girl, boy tries to get girl back. Citizen Kane, on the other hand makes use of rich differing styles. It begins with the expressionistic death, then is interrupted with the newsreel and booming voice-of-god, then moves into the projection room with reporters, shadows and smoke.
Casablanca, however, makes great use of good dialogue and strong focus on the actors as deep characters. Redemption is also something achieved at the end at the cost of love. Citizen Kane has strong composition in depth and shadows, low camera angles, and the complicated handling of the narrative point of view.