Break through

Rating: 5/10 (22 April 2020)

The whole story began with "rosebud," Kane's last words before he died. Reporter Thompson uncovers Kane's life by interviewing people who can explain "rosebud." At the end of citizen Kane, when the sled with the words "rosebud" burns up, the audience seems to understand the meaning of rosebud vaguely, a kind of lost happiness? A simple regret? Or a lonely ending? And it seems that the audience can't understand the true meaning of "rosebud" after all? ...
However, it is the unknown meaning of "rosebud" that leads to the meaning of citizen Kane itself.
From form to structure, citizen Kane boldly breaks through the original Hollywood classic narrative mode.
At the beginning of the film, there is Kane's mansion and gate, with the words "no admittance", accompanied by the big and scary music, like leading the audience into a mystery or detective film; In the following scene, the character Kane is introduced like a news documentary; When journalists talk about "rosebud" and Thompson begins to investigate Kane's life, it's like a biopic; In those montage scenes where Susan sings the opera, the audience seems to see the way the musical is done... It can be seen from this that we can't frame this movie with the classic Hollywood genre at all. It USES the elements of many types of Hollywood movies and completely blurs the Hollywood model from the genre at first.
Hollywood's classic narrative emphasizes the objectification of the story and presents a basically objective story. The film shows Kane's life in five large flashbacks. In investigation and Thompson Kane lives two lines of puncture, Thompson respectively from Bernstein cut the son, and his manager and his good friend, and his second wife, Susan and the servant Raymond know there for Kane's childhood and his career, his private life (marriage) for the first time, he of the middle-aged and old age, and so on. Kane's life is connected in the narration of each different narrator, which is highly subjective. In many scenes, the director also violates the time order to arrange the plot. This film breaks the previous linear narrative mode of film order, and adopts multiple narrative structure, flexibly USES flashbacks and flashbacks, and breaks through the single point of view of the narrative, instead, it presents Kane from multiple perspectives.
The classic Hollywood model stresses a closed ending, that is, the story begins with conflict and ends with problem solving, which is a dramatic story structure. In this film, the audience cannot see the ending at all, or rather, the ending that the audience sees is only an open ending. That is to say, there are conflicts but not resolved, put forward questions but not resolved. In the enigma of "rosebud," the audience gets a lot of thinking and imagination. Thompson ends by saying that "there is no word that can explain Kane's life," leaving the film's ending ambiguous and ambiguous, a complete break from the clear Hollywood ending. With the open approach, the audience does not have to forcibly accept the director's intention, but has their own space to feel. In this, perhaps, is the biggest rebellion against the classic Hollywood model.
In the classic model of Hollywood, the focus is on creating the stereotyped, flat characters. In the film, Kane's character also seems unclear. Of course, because of the film's multiple perspectives, in addition to being able to face the scene before Kane's death, at other times, Kane is either in the newsreel or in other people's memories. The five narrators, setcher, Bernstein, ryland, Susan, and Raymond, each present a side of Kane that is complex and multifaceted. The character image of Kane has become more three-dimensional and vivid in the words of different characters, and also has a speculative color. Bernstein recalls Kane in a sympathetic and emotional way, and ryland talks about his relationship with Kane in a cynical way... All of this brings with it the subjectivity of the perspective, and the argument from these perspectives does not fully account for Kane's true character. The film just shows a complex character and the social relationship of the character, etc., but it does not break the theme and character like the previous classic mode, making the film more imaginative and exploratory. In classic Hollywood, often shaped are some spiritual love with material wealth and have the perfect figure, and the film just describes how Kane from a idealistic, young ignorant young man into a no friendship without love recluse such a process, a kind of life, has clearly run counter to the Hollywood shape character pattern.
In addition to the story structure and the theme of the characters, the film has made a bold breakthrough in the Hollywood model, as well as a new attempt in the film shooting technique.
For example, the film created and used a large number of depth of field shots, making the picture in the depth of more changes and scheduling, greatly enhance the spatial tension of the film. These interesting depth-of-field shots make the audience's vision more realistic and require the audience to think more actively and even participate in the scene scheduling. Such as in the show Kane's mother and tucked the long Chelsea has signed the contract, the original looks like a small Kane's panoramic camera, but the camera back, out of a window, and then the Kane's mother, continue to pull back, Kane's mother and son sat in the outlook of cutting table to sign the contract, Kane's father stood in the left of the picture, () in the depths of the scene outside the window the little Cain is play with snow in the snow. This long shot is enough to show the director's unique way of bringing the complexity of the plot into the picture at the same time. In a classic Hollywood narrative, the passage would have been handled with a straight up, down, continuous montage. This is the use of deep space scene scheduling to complete the picture expression. This kind of long shot fully reflects the characteristics of the film, reproduces the unified film space and time, more expressive than the general editing program.
The film also used a large number of low Angle shooting lens, so that the picture has a very unique meaning. The biggest Angle of this film is shot in the most unsuccessful time of kaine's life, that is, he lost the election for governor. The camera is low to the ground, and the ceiling is visible, greatly highlighting this space. In such a scene, not only reproduce the reality of the scene, more importantly, create a very depressed atmosphere, but also hint at the failure of the giant, hint of Kane from a successful to a lonely transition.
In the editing of some special scenes, the film is also unique. In the case of Kane and Emily's marriage, for example, the film's extremely brief and clever montage shows. The passage USES several short snippets to trace briefly the failure of Kane's first marriage. Just a few montage of breakfast scenes, from the characters' lines, expressions, makeup, etc., show their progress from intimacy to hostility.
The stylized narrative, dramatic structural principles, stereotyped character sets, single objective viewpoints, and smooth, continuous editing of previous Hollywood classics have been completely broken in citizen Kane. The narrative discourse of film has a new expression and breakthrough in citizen Kane, which has a great influence on more modern and diversified films in the future.
The "rosebud" puzzle is now open to everyone's opinion, but it's safe to say that "rosebud" opens a new era of modern cinema, which rejects the aesthetic principles of previous films