Interesting bits.

Rating: Null/10 (6 October 1999)

Having seen Citizen Kane almost two dozen times I have discovered a few interesting things about it. You may or may not have heard everything there is to be said about Citizen Kane's innovations--deep focus, low angles, most important American film ever made, and so forth. If not, one can easily discover these famous ideas so I won't restate them here. What follows instead is a list of fun things you can look for while viewing this landmark film.
· The opening shots are of the Xanadu castle from different locations on the Xanadu grounds (actually all were paintings.). There is a light in one window. Notice that in each new shot, from a different angle, the castle is a little closer than in the one preceding and in each shot, the window is in the same position on the film frame, almost perfectly matching the shot before.
· Joseph Cotton and Erskin Sanford are sitting in the back row of the projection room being extra "reporters" or "staff" when the "News on the March" newsreel ends. · There is very nearly one cut (the illusion of one cut, certainly) when Susan Alexander is first interviewed: shot of Susie on a poster; pan up over the roof; dolly forward through a "neon" sign; down through the rainy window; down to normal camera height; follow "Thompson" as he walks over to Susan; follow him as he sits down; rather long scene follows, then he gets back up; crosses the room to the phone booth. First cut is a reverse angle in the phone booth. The same thing is repeated for her second interview. There are many "long cuts" throughout the film where entire scenes are played in one cut. They're all interesting to watch but this one is really something.
· Watch how seamlessly the transition goes from one scene to another as Ray Collins (Gettys) and Ruth Warwick (Emily) come out of Susan's apartment. Kane is shouting, "I'll send you to Sing Sing" and as the door closes his voice is covered by the sound of a car honking, street noise, a few words are exchanged, they leave, pan up to the number above the door and then there is an almost invisible dissolve to a picture of the same door in a picture in the paper and a news boy shouting "Read all about it", shot of Leland as he turns and walks back through a door into a bar, to get drunk.

· The opera house opening night. The story is told from two different points of view. First Leland's, we see the confusion backstage and a front shot as the shadow of the curtain opens. Later the same story is told by Susan, same scene from the reverse angle. In the first one, the camera pans up through the fly system of an enormous theatre until we reach the stage hands holding their noses disapprovingly. This is actually series of paintings all flawlessly put together in the lab, using several traveling matte shots.
· When they go on a picnic in the Everglades. There is a scene in the tent where Kane's makeup is many years older than the preceding and following scene.
· When Susan Alexander leaves him, she walks across a terrace. The scene is a triple matte shot. In the background is an ocean/beach view. In the middle ground is the terrace. In the foreground for an instant is a screeching "parrot." You can see through the eye of the parrot.

· In the scene where Kane destroyed Susan's room after she leaves, Welles cut his left hand pretty badly during the take and had to be taken to the doctor. When he comes up to the glass ball in close up at the end of the scene, he appears to hide his left hand (because he knows it was bleeding, perhaps.)
· The film ends with a long shot on Xanadu. Black smoke is pouring out the chimney. This image is in a lot of Welles's films. See Mr. Arkadin or The Trial.