Raised the bar for presentation & storytelling.

Rating: 8/10 (25 June 2013)

Orson Welles' 'Citizen Kane' is a classic film about a successful American entrepreneur, Charles Foster Kane, and retraces the events of his life up until his mysterious last words, "rosebud". The film encompasses a unique style of cinematography for its time, some of which had never been tried in film before. Every small aspect of this film has a significant meaning that serves a purpose to each scene, and is sometimes hard for the average viewer to pick up. Things like the positioning of the props and the lighting cast on the characters' faces are purposefully conducted to express the filmmaker's capabilities. The film's cinematographer, Gregg Toland, incorporated a lot of new and unusual techniques for that age, and set a whole new standard for presentation in movies.
The most notable quality of 'Citizen Kane' is the use of mise en scène throughout the movie. Each character is placed in a specific place on the set, in order to allow the camera to free flow through the scene, capturing multiple angles of the same scene. Everything is in plain view without any obstruction, not to mention all in sharp focus due to Toland's use of deep focus. The setting is usually grand and sometimes seems somewhat deceptive at times. For example during an interview with one of Kane's old colleagues, we see him sitting at a table with a fireplace burning behind him, which looks like it's only a couple of feet behind him. As the camera pans back, he eventually gets up and walks to the back of the room, and then finally up to the fireplace. He is surprisingly dwarfed by the now obviously large fireplace. This kind of trickery with depth perception is one of this film's most captivating perks.
There's also a lot of symbolism within this movie, and actually tells a lot of the story than most of the dialog. As we're taken through the scattered scenes of Charles Foster Kane's life, we begin to get an idea of how huge this man's life has become. But it also becomes apparent of how empty it actually is. The setting of his incredible home Xanadu, enormous and grand, is also cold and empty. And as he begins to lose what little he has left to cherish, his final words start to make a little more sense. In the final scene the camera soars over a sea of boxes and crates, all of which were Kane's many belongings. In my eyes, all these boxes began to look like a massive city, which I think reflects the enormity of what Kane had accomplished in life. But none of the contents have the purity of his old sled, "Rosebud".