Making Of The Film Citizen Kane example essay topic

Orson Welles: Radio Cinema In the first half of the twentieth century, a little boy could conceivably have heard Orson Welles long before he heard of him. The year was 1937, and over the ether came the cavernous, menacingly righteous growl "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men The Shadow knows. Heh-heh-heh". A twenty-two-year-old prodigy, world wanderer, and eventually, man for all media, had assumed the radio role ofthe Shadow, alias Lamont Cranston, the man of mystery who could "cloud men's minds so that they cannot see him".

The reis indeed in this description a foreshadowing of the magical tricks and Germanic expressionism that were to go into the making of the film Citizen Kane. Some would say that Welles became a personification of his Lamont Cranston character when he began making feature films in 1940. That is to say that his prior work with radio had taught him much about the workings of the human psyche, and as such, he had become a master of clouding the minds of his audience to such an extent that what they saw in his films and what they experienced while seeing them were two different things entirely. Penny Mintz has described OrsonWelles as an artist who, gains control our ability to organize the barrage of stimuli that is constantly assaulting us (Weis and Belton, Film Sound 289).

She goes on to say that a careful study of Citizen Kane, reveals a progression toward manipulation of the viewer's powers of concentration, his visual and aural perception, and disorientation of his spatial and temporal organization (289). In fact, some would say that without having invented and honed his storytelling craft as part of the Mercury Radio Theater Group prior to his embarkation on the Kane project, the resulting film, and those that followed it, might well have found a rather bland destiny. The influences of Welles background in radio drama upon Citizen Cane and much of narrative film thereafter are quite pronounced and with little more than a cursory consideration, one begins to realize the extent of this influence. The first, and most superficially apparent of these influences can be found in many of Welles casting choices. In Ken Dancyger's book, Robert Carringer tells us that many roles were created with certain performers in mind, whose voices had certain expressive qualities which would bea tremendous asset to the director in the telling of history.

Joseph Cotton's character, Jed Leland, is sited as the primary example of this repertory approach (The Technique of Film and Video Editing 77). It follows that, given Welles background and facility in radio drama relative this known lack of confidence in his own screen acting ability as described by (James Naremore The Magic of Orson Welles 147); one must conclude that Welles desire to portray Charles Kane, the film's main character, was motivated by his desire to shape the character personally, through vocal expression rather than physical screen presence. Another dramatic device with which Orson Welles became conversant in radio drama, and brought with him to CitizenKane is the use of narrator to convey ideas which could neither be demonstrated visually or through dramaticdailogue. In fact, Welles used not one but five narrators in Kane. The first, a narrator in the conventional sense, speaks in what is described by Dancyger as Movietonefashion (78). The newsreel voiceover he provides accompanies a montage of iam ges from Kane's life, in which, Dancyger speculates, language rather than images shape ideas about [Kane s] life (78).

However, one can conclude that itis the synthesis of the two which create the desired conveyance in the mind of the viewer. That is, the images themselves have no implicit meaning until they are married with the narrator's words, which then catalyze, and togrtherprovoke certain abstract themes in the mind of the viewer. Just one example is the reference to images Xanadu in the context of Kublai Kahn and Noah. As Dancyger says, these references make demonstrate the shear scale and quality of Kane's abode (78). At the same time, Welles has very subtly planted the notion of Kane's aspirations of power and excess by drawing comparisons to grandiose, universal figures of literature.

Welles uses four more narrators throughout the Kane, but their dramatic contributions are different; Thatcher, Leland, Bernstein, and Susan are less forthcoming than the newsreel narrator. Their reluctance helps to stimulate our curiosity by creating a feeling that they know more than they are telling. (Dancyger 79) These characters, who's dramatic roles go beyond narration, are much less objective, as if there is information they must keep from the audience to protect themselves, and perhaps even the image of Kane himself. In addition to careful choice of cast and spoken dialogue, Orson Wells adapted many of the narrative editing techniques which he had perfected in radio drama, for use inh is films. The most readily conceivable of these adaptations would later be dubbed the lightning mix. This technique involved the use of continuous sound to tie montage sequences together instead of narrative logic.

The first manifestation of Welles lightning mix technique comes early in CitizenKane as a young Charlie Kane is presented with a sled and wished a Merry Christmas by his guardian, and then the picture cuts to a shot of the same man completing the sentence, and a Happy New Year, fifteen years later, and ina different location. In real-time, only a few moments and scarcely ten feet of film have passed. Yet, the director suse of continuous sound over a synchronized, match-cut picture track tells us that several years have passed, and that the boy has grown into a man under the auspices of a no waging but relentlessly stern Thatcher. Perhaps the most efficient use of the lightning mix transition comes in the second act of the film and relates the entire progression of Charles Kane's gubernatorial campaign. The sequence begins with a shot of Kane at Susan Alexander's boardinghouse as she sings at the piano. The ensuing match-cut takes us to a richly appointed parlor in an apartment which Kane has retained for Susan, who is still singing.

As her performance ends, there is applause from Kane, which is deftly dissolved into the applause of a small crowd in attendance at a rally where a Kane associate is addressing them on his behalf. The applause swells as the speaker continues, I am speaking for Charles Foster Kane, the fighting liberal who entered upon this campaign with one purpose, and one purpose only-. At this point, the voice becomes Kane's own, and we see him addressing a throng of supporters at a rally in Madison Square Garden. As the camera tracks toward the speaker's podium, the words grow louder and the sentence is completed, -to point out and make public the dishonesty and downright villainy of Boss JimGettys political machine. As Kane's address carries on, the narrative takes on a conventional form once again. Here again, Welles has used audio to motivate and contextualize a sequence which gives his audience a wealth of information about events that have transpired over the course of months, in the space of a few moments of film.

The lightning mix technique is used in several instances throughout CitizenKane and in each of Welles subsequent films, in addition to being adopted by several of his contemporaries. Yet another device which Orson Welles brought to film from radio and used for the first time in Kane is referred toby David Cook as the, overlapping sound montage (A History of Modern Film 412). On stage, and in film until Kane, lines of dialogue were spoken one after another without incidence of overlap. Welles composed scenes in such a way that multiple characters spoke, as they do in real life, at the same time so that part of the dialogue is lost. Welles used this method to create a sense of realism, and what Cook refers to as, collective conversation (412). The prime example of this device as used throughout Kane takes place inthe screening room after the projection of Kane's News onThe March newsreel.

The entire audience seems to bespeaking at once. Viewers of Citizen Kane find themselves inthe midst of the meeting as a participant, rather than an omnipresent observer of it. Again, Welles has found a way to use sound to suspend his audience's notion that they are watching a film, but instead advances the perception that they are part of events portrayed onscreen. While directors such as Lewis Milestone had used overlapping dialogue in films prior to Citizen Kane, none had used it to such an extent, or to achieve the same result. However, like the lightning mix, a great many directors have since adopted the technique.

Among them are Carol Reed, and the more recent Robert Altman (Higham American Genius: Orson Welles 48). The most pervasive, yet least intrusive element of Orson Welle's repertoire of radio derived aural manipulations is related to the alteration of spatial relationships between characters within the motion picture frame. He has used subtle sound alterations to change subconscious perceptions of characters and events in most every scene within CitizenKane. In order to begin to understand the workings of these subtle adjustments, it is important to understand that sound has several integral functions in conventional narrative film. Penny Mintz describes the conventions as follows: Spatial sounds obey the laws of real sound. Our ears place the sound within space.

We are not limited, aurally, as we are visually, by the flay screen. If the sound track of a movie accurately conforms to the behavior of natural sound in space, we receive aural cues which determine distance, direction, and, to certain extent, the surroundings of the source. The result is a definition of space a substantially less illusionary sense of depth. (290) As in life, a well constructed film soundtrack indicates surroundings.

In particular, a sense of surroundings is provided by sound quality and volume. One can detect such differences in the voice of Charles Kane as he moves through the halls of Xanadu as compared to the same qualities as Kane speaks in the car, on the way to the picnic. This variance and others like are the result of accurate representation of natural properties of sound. Bordwell and Thompson explain that, Various objects absorb and reflect different amounts and frequencies of sound according to material density (Fundamental Aesthetics of Sound in the Cinema 189). As people who experience these natural phenomena in life and cinema alike, audiences have come to perceive, subconsciously interpret, and expect natural differentiation of sounds in the real world surroundings and filmicapproximations of them.

When these factors are ignored, or purposely used to distort the duplication of real sound, the mismatch makes us vaguely uncomfortable, slightly dislocated, usually without our knowing why. (Mintz 290) Orson Welles was acutely aware of the potential to operate within the subconscious perceptions of his audience by means of sound nuance. Examples of such deft manipulations can be found in the majority of Citizen Kane's Xanadu scenes. It should be noted that Welles developed and made greater use use this technique in his later films, Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil. (LoBrutto Sound on Film 207). While it is possible to indicate surroundings in film through appropriate use of sound texture, it is somewhat more difficult to accurately portray direction by similar means because humans perceive direction primarily through the binaural nature of their auditory structure.

(Penny Mintz has stated that humans detect a time difference between two ears and the minute difference in volume due to the sound shadow cast by the head [291]). This obstacle has been largely overcome since the invention and of stereo recording and playback, but OrsonWelles did not have these devices at his disposal when hema de Kane. Instead, aural direction had to be illustrated in monaural cinema through use of visual cues onscreen. We perceive the source of a voice because we see its speaker slips move in time with the words we hear. Likewise, the directionality of off-screen sound had to be indicated by the reaction of characters we could see.

Welles, who had long been a practitioner of a sound-only medium was not hampered by these technical limitations. On the contrary, says RobertCarringer, Welles ordered that sound playback be slightly out of synchronization in two passages in Citizen Kane, and whenever Rosebud references were made (The Making of Citizen Kane 126). This device, like sound texture manipulations, contributed to the subconscious disorientation, and discomforting of viewers. Orson Welles drew from his experience as a radio dramatist not only in terms of simple sound design.

Because he first understood the implications of sound as a standalone dramatic medium, and its power to manipulate the subconscious, he was able to combine sound with image in ways that had synergistic effect which went far beyond the power of either medium when treated as separate elements. Rather than using sound to merely contribute to realism of the images he created, Welles was able to use the sound and image in tandem, and sometimes in contrast, to provoke, clarify, and manipulate perceptions of time, space, character, distance and discord which could not have come out of either medium alone. Radio Cinema Radio cinema. Altman, Rick ed., Sound Theory, Sound Practice. New York: Routledge, 1992. Bordwell and Thompson Fundamental Aesthetics of Sound in the Cinema, in Weis and Belton ed., Film Sound: Theory and Practice.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Carringer, R.L. The Making of Citizen Kane. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film. 2nd Ed. New York: Norton & Co., 1981.

Dancyger, Ken The Technique of Film and Video Editing. Boston: Focal Press, 1993. Higham, Charles American Genius: Orson Welles. 2nd Ed. NewYork: St. Martin's Press, 1985. LoBrutto, Vincent Sound-On-Film.

Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 1994 Mintz, Penny Orson Welles Use of Sound, in Weis and Belton ed., Film Sound: Theory and Practice. Naremore, James The Magic of Orson Welles. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1989. Rosenbaum, J. ed. This is Orson Welles.

New York: Harper &Collins, 1992.