To be honest, watching Citizen Kane for the first time I felt myself slightly falling asleep. The black and white made the movie feel very dark and it felt like every shot was crowded with lots of old men standing around talking about nothing that interested me. When the film finished I was left wondering how this could be considered a cinematic masterpiece and why it is renowned as a classic. However, I wanted to at least try to understand what made it so influential so I decided to watch some of the extras since I had rented the DVD of the film.
One of the extras I found was a commentary track over the entire movie, breaking down each scene and what went into it, and, I have to admit it made me take back what I said before. The extra outlined how little money Orson Welles actually had for the film and explained how many of the clips in the beginning were taken from the RKO archive and that even many of the sets were a combination of old movie sets repurposed, miniatures, and matte paintings.
Another really interesting fact about the movie that I learned and wanted to share was that many of the ceilings were made from fabric so that microphones could be hidden above. When light is shined up on the fabric it appears completely solid which is an interesting trick Welles came up with.
Overall, while this wasn’t my favorite movie we have watched, I still am glad I have now seen it and can understand ‘rosebud’ references. Although, the plot did not speak to me, I do have a great appreciation for the ingenuity, craftiness, and ambition Welles had in creating this film and am interested to see what thoughts everyone will have in the discussion.
Hi Victoria,
I enjoyed hearing about your thoughts on Citizen Kane. I actually agree that at first it was really hard to resonate with the plot of the movie. From my perspective, the beginning was really slow for me as well and I also didn’t resonate with any of the characters. But I thought there were parts of the movie that were interesting. For example I would say i’m interested in learning about politics so hearing that being played with as Charles Kane was a politician was interesting to me, also the romance between Charles Kane and Susan Alexander was fun to watch as I love romance too. Something I didn’t really understand until the end of the movie though, that made the plot a lot better for me personally, was the highlight on child innocence. After seeing that “rosebud” was Charles Kanes’ sled that he had as a child right before his life kind of got corrupted, made me think back on the movie in a different way. The plot of the movie kind of changed right then and there for me and made me want to rewatch it now with this new perspective. The entire movie I was viewing Charles as the villan but maybe that was the point? To know that all villans have a backstory and sometimes it isnt all their fault. He was the one stripped of his innocence so young so maybe we all should have felt bad for him instead? Im not sure but I might have to rewatch with this new perspective.