Must See

Rating: 8/10 (7 December 2016)

I loved the movie, the artfulness that Orson Welles crafts in his films is astounding in this film. The trick to his technique in Citizen Kane lies in mise-en-scene and the tools of film: lighting, framing, editing and angle. The most obvious and prevalent cinematic technique used in Citizen Kane is the lighting. The director meant for it to be a dark picture with very heavy contrasts, so he used single light source. The objective was to use simple lighting in order to give the scene a certain ambiance and in some cases, to further develop the characters with the use of shadows. An example of single source lighting is when Thompson is reading Mr. Thatcher's memoirs. This lone light source creates a sense of isolation which seems to accentuate Thompson's lonely quest. The way the light illuminates the room also says a great deal about Thatcher's personality, especially by how it illuminates the large portrait of him hanging on the wall. The movie is exemplary, Welles' was an artist, uniquely and precisely. It was a good movie solely because of this, the way he told this story, a simple plot, strewn with flashbacks, into an absorbing film is incredible.