The choice of camera position was an
important factor in getting across artistic and psychological effects. To the
photograph a person or object from below, distorts that object. It tends to
elongate a person, making him seem more important. It also intimidates the
audience, since it is in the inferior position of looking up. The scene gives an
added power to the person on the screen. Kane is indeed bloated and enlarged by
his material possessions, and in comparison, the audience feels very small. Yet
it is precisely his excessiveness, which has distorted him and made him
grotesque to our sensibilities. Kane is a selfish, greedy man, and his actions
have distorted his life and appearance. The movie is a visual masterpiece, a
kaleidoscope of daring angles and breathtaking images that had never been
attempted before.
Toland perfected a deep-focus technique that allowed him to
photograph backgrounds with as much clarity as foregrounds. Such as the scene
where Kane's parents discuss his future while, as seen through the window, the
child plays outside in the snow. There's also an extremely effective low-angle
shot late in the film where Kane trashes Susan's room. Sound montage is used
extensively with the flashback scenes to denote the interval of time within
related scenes. A character will begin a sentence and complete it weeks, months,
or years later in a different location. On occasion, one character will begin
the sentence and another will complete it in the same manner. This sound thread
results in a constriction of time and an elimination of transitional periods of
rest and calm. Aside from the aesthetic dividends of pacing and high lighting,
Citizen Kane's sound montage reinforces the unnatural tension of the central
character's driving, joyless ambition. One brilliant use of sound montage, is
when Kane and his wife are arguing in a tent surrounded by hundreds of Kane's
guests. A shrill scream punctuates the argument with a persistent, sensual
rhythm. It is clear that some sexual outrage is being committed. When the
parakeet screams at the appearance of Kane, the sound linkage in tone but not in
time, further dehumanizes Kane's environment. In the baroque world that he had
created, Kane is isolated from even the most dubious form of humanity. In all
respects, the techniques used in Citizen Kane are a reflection and projection of
the inhuman quality of its protagonist. In the way the techniques are used to
distort and magnify the characters in the film, we understand what the film is
trying to get across. Citizen Kane represents an intense vision of American
life, a life in which materialistic elements are distorted and magnified at the
expense of human potentialities. The implied absence of free will in the
development of Kane's character is thematically constant with the moral climate
of his environment. As the techniques used have not been limited in form, so
too, Kane's magnitude unchecked by limiting principles or rooted traditions,
become the cause of spiritual.
