Ahead of its' time.

Rating: 10/10 (28 January 2005)

The main thing that stands out when watching Citizen Kane is that the techniques used in the cinematography were decades ahead of their time. Specifically, the rotoscoping in of reflections, the camera angles, and the "pseudo-interview". The camera angles used in Citizen Kane were not really picked up for common use until the early to mid 1980's. This film was the first to really integrate the perspective of the viewer to make an emotional and psychological impact outside of the typical movies of the time. It was a risk taken by Orson Welles, and has had impacts that reverberate to this day in the movies that we watch, though some directors do not even know "why" a camera angle holds so much impact. Viewing this movie as a time capsule of the art-deco period, and taking in the "might of man" attitude of the time period, it is easy to sense how Leni Riefenstahl and Ayn Rand both influenced the directors vision.