Reference no: EM13160742

I don't need to summarize the whole story/ or define the technical terms
Could you guys just correcting grammatical or structural mistakes in this paper?

Title: Technical Analysis of Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane is a movie about the life of an American newspaper magnate, Charles Foster Kane. Overall flow of this film focuses on the rises and falls of Kane. Director provides the realism to audience by using deep-focus, long take and dissolve. It allows spectators to be free to choose what they want to see and to see every part of the shot clearly.

First of all, director used deep-focused shots in this film and it sustains some sort of unities or continuities of images in space and time. In addition, directors can capture the layered spaces in one shot while maintaining objectivity of scene itself by using deep-focus. As a result, audiences immersed in the film and they can interpret the scene by the way they understand and think in the real world in which where we live every day. There are three main interesting deep focused shots. After Susan finished the Opera, there is a scene which director intentionally arranged the bottle of medicine in close next to the Susan so that spectators can realize the fact that Susan took some pills and attempted to suicide. Then, Kane kicked out of the door and came into the room (01:35:46-01:37:15). This kind of deep focus shooting can be used as a tool of mise-en-scene and it shows that all the causes of the problem originally came from Kane and his impersonality. Furthermore, it brings suppressed or victimized people, especially women into relief. The other interesting scene is emerging right after previous scene. Kane suggests Susan to go to picnic with him after Susan’s health getting better (01:41:34-01:41:97). In this scene, Susan puts the puzzle together and Kane sat in a chair. Spectators can see the Kane at close, but hard to recognize Susan as time goes by. It shows that as their physical distances getting farther away, their relationships getting worse. Also, it shows the huge scale of private castle, Xanadu. The enormous room of Xanadu displays the remote relationship and the emptiness of their life. Spectators may think that unhappy days in Xanadu can be a subplot of their divorce. Also, it shows how greedy person the Kane is. Furthermore, it can be a critical perspective of the ills of the capitalism and how the environment determines human behavior.

Second, another technique is a long take shot based on the movement of the camera. Director often used crane shot for the long take. It recognizes the scene as a one unit. It is kind of process people recognizing their surroundings in reality. Moreover, the audience can also feel the realism of the scene because diegesis is almost coincides with the real time and the audience can feel the three-dimensional feeling due to the figure of the movements. There were many long take scenes in this film. Most typical scenes are Susan and Thompson’s interview. In the first interview, Thompson was trying to interview with Susan, but he was rejected (00:14:33-00:15:53). The camera closes up to a shabby cheap sign of Susan at first and then it goes down to a table inside of bar. This long take immerses the spectator in scene and the shabby sign describes Susan’s miserable circumstances indirectly. Director showed the rain, the shabby cheap sign of Susan and the appearance of Susan at the same time by using crane. The segments of the interview were not structured as traditional chronological stories but the time is rearranged according to different point of view of each interviewee’s. In the second interview, Thompson visits Bernstein who was Kane’s devoted assistant for the paper. At the beginning, Bernstein claims that he does know the meaning of ‘Rosebud’. His recollection was concentrated on Kane’s success (00:30:17-00:32:33). Due to the long take, spectators could see every object or person in this scene. Thus, spectators could infer whose room it is. There was a portrait of Kane hangs on the top of the ceiling, so the owner of this room will be closely related to Kane and he or she will be concentrated on Kane’s success. This scene was quite different from montage scenes which shorten the time and guide spectators to a certain object according to director’s intention. Since the intention of the director is not clearly expressed, spectators feel the ambiguity, which makes them curious about the text or flow of the film. With this curiosity evoked from ambiguity, spectators experience emotional sympathy by means of immersion. This is the way spectators relate to this scene just like the fact that people are involved in reality in their everyday life.

Lastly, the other technique is dissolve. This is the art of editing in film. It appears a lot in this film because of the inverse process of tracking the death of the Kane. There was a famous breakfast scene of Kane and Emily (00:51:55-00:53:65). This scene shows degenerating process of marriage same as many other people. Physically, several years have passed away, but director showed the compression of time by using cross cut and he used the long shot at the last part of this scene. He showed Kane and Emily seating at the opposite edge of the table. It shows both physical and spiritual distances between Kane and Emily. This scene implies the separation of Kane and Emily. The final shot of this film has symmetrical relationship with the beginning (01:56:15-01:57:22). Also, there was a dissolve at the last scene. “Rosebud” was burnt down. After a dissolve, the camera shows the exterior site of Xanadu by tilting up from the chimney. There was a dark smoke of burnt from chimney scattering into the sky. It means the answer for Thompson’s search disappears in the form of dark smoke. Then, spectators can see the “No Trespassing” sign again and the film faded out with the Kane’s initial “K” and the spectators remain outside of the iron fence. However, the answer is known to spectators themselves only.

In conclusion, director of Citizen Kane provides the spectators with realism by using deep-focus, long take, and dissolve. First of all, director used deep-focus shot in this film and it gives such a freedom of choice what spectators would like to see and an ambiguity at the same time. Also, it keeps up clear unity of images in space or time. Spectators could perceive the realism by the whole area with a sharply focused image. Second, there were many of long take shots in this film. Long takes make spectators recognize the scene as a one unit. Long take was used in the most typical interviews of the scenes. Third, director used dissolve which is kind of editing techniques in film. It seems that this kind of techniques were quite helpful for converting between each scenes. As a result, director may think that realism in this film will be found out by the process of hiding and seeking with spectators. Clearly showing all on the screen is deep focus and drawing out feeling of reality by long takes but it conceals the ultimate theme until the end of the film. The reason why the director chose these kinds of methods is to convey and arouse a strong affinity for the theme of Citizen Kane. He was very complex character. Thus, it is almost impossible to understand him completely. Many techniques that were used in this film may help spectators out when it comes to Kane and his life.