those factors were part of the predominant Ameri-
can movie culture before the Second World War.
In terms of cinematic style, narrative and editing
conventions adapted to the challenges of sound pro-
duction, and there were significant innovations in
design, cinematography, lighting, acting, and edit-
ing, some related to sound, others not. Black-and-
white film remained the industry standard through
the early 1950s, despite some interesting feature
movies in Technicolor, eventually to become the new
industry standard. Other technological advance-
ments during the golden age included improvements
in lighting, makeup, and film stock. While the pre-
dominant cinematographic style of the 1930s was
soft-focus, the new lighting and film stock made it
easier to achieve greater depth of focus, which cre-
ated the illusion of perspective.
That was all to change with the release of Citizen
Kanein 1941, some forty-six years after the invention
of motion pictures; Orson Welles’s film revolution-
ized the medium and has since been considered the
most important movie ever made. There are many
reasons for that, but what maintains its reputation
is Welles’s genius as an artist and his vision of a new
kind of cinema. He was twenty-four when he began
the project, his first movie. While the story of news-
paper magnate Charles Foster Kane rests firmly in
the biopic genre, Welles tells it with a complex plot
consisting of nine sequences (each of which uses
a different tone and style), five of which are flash-
backs. Including the omniscient camera, there are
seven narrators—not all of whom are reliable—who,
taken together, provide a modern psychological
portrait of a megalomaniac. Released just seven
months before the U.S. declared war in December
1941, this was a radical film for Hollywood. And
while the movie is open to various interpretations
(the Freudian interpretation of young Charlie’s rela-
tionship to his mother remaining very influential),
Citizen Kanecarries a strong antifascist message. It
warns against Kane’s arrogant abuse of the First
Amendment right of freedom of speech and press,
one of the many evils that Americans, reading their
own newspapers, associated with Hitler.
Citizen Kanewas also radical in its handling of
the prevailing cinematic language of its time. We
see this in the astonishing complexity and speed of
the narrative. It may not seem so radical today, but
that is only because it influenced the structure and
pace of nearly every significant movie that came
after it. In the other elements of cinematic form,
Welles was equally innovative. The stark design of
the film is heavily influenced by German Expres-
sionism, as seen in the size, height, and depth of the
rooms and other spaces at Xanadu. Through deep-
space composition, lighting, deep-focus cinematog-
raphy, and long takes, cinematographer Gregg
Toland achieved the highest degree of cinematic
realism yet seen. In contrast to the prevailing soft
look of 1930s movies, Citizen Kanehas a hard finish.
The omniscient, probing, and usually moving
camera, emphasizing its voyeuristic role, goes454 CHAPTER 10FILM HISTORY
Cinematic innovation in Citizen KaneCitizen Kane
(1941; director: Orson Welles) is marked by brilliant innovations
that changed cinematic language forever. Among these is
deep-focus cinematography, pioneered by Gregg Toland,
which permits action on all three planes of the image. Here,
the action is focused both on the foreground and background.
As Signor Matiste (Fortunio Bononova, standing second from
left) becomes increasingly frustrated in his efforts to train the
voice of Susan Alexander Kane (Dorothy Comingore), her
husband, Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), standing in the
background, registers his impressions of the rehearsal.
Husband, wife, and vocal coach are all participating in a long
take, making cutting between them unnecessary. However,
Kane will soon make it clear—however small he may look in
this image—that he, not Matiste, is in charge of his wife’s
singing career. She, of course, has nothing to say about it. This
is only one of Kane’s egotistical mistakes that help to ruin
their mutual careers and marriage.