Orson Welles

My dad has asked me a couple times what’s so great about Citizen Kane because he had heard so much about it but never actually seen it. He asked me to describe it to him and all I could say was “it’s about a guy that owns a newspaper and gets rich and powerful but eventually dies alone”. Yeah, not very convincing for selling one of the most celebrated films ever. Obviously I just have to get him to watch it because the work speaks for itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNaDrnxp3L0

One thing that reading talked about that I noticed watching the film were the sound transitions as exampled in the clip above. In films that need to cover a lot of history or narrative information quickly sound is essential. In the example, sound transitions from Kane clapping to the small crowd clapping then the characters’ speeches running together are used to quickly convey Kane’s increasing popularity. Just like the breakfast table scene where Kane and his first wife get progressively further apart in a scene that tells the story of their relationship in less than a minute. This transition technique may be present in other Welles films but it is most useful in this case since there is only 90 minutes available to tell the story of a lifetime.