Cinematography and Plot Structure in Citizen Kane

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Viewer, Week 8 (10/13+10/15) • Narrative

I really get the hype around this movie! Citizen Kane seems to have it all, with a lot of elements that I wouldn’t imagine were typical for other films at the time. This movie is an extremely successful experiment of plot, editing, and cinematography, and features a talented cast of emerging actors–which is such a successful debut to have.

One of the first technical elements I noticed about Citizen Kane was the transitions. Welles keeps transitions constant between shots–there is a tendency to maintain similar silhouettes of subjects within shots between the transition as one dissolves into the next. He also sometimes takes a more dynamic approach, like when it cuts to a kid holding a newspaper that covers the frame, then properly entering the scene as he puts it down. Either way, every transition was clean and calculated, and made this film a much more enjoyable watch. The music, as well, was very enhancing. In many cases, dramatic and comedic, it was sort of cartoon-ish and had the interesting effect of detracting from the seriousness of a more dramatic plot point, but still maintaining the tone. This cartoon-ish tendency certainly enhanced the comedic points as well, to give into the more borderline slapstick moments. Lastly, in regards to cinematography, I noticed that the camera frame is frequently moving. Whether it’s a zoom (which is very frequent in this film relative to others) or a mobile frame, the cinematography became much more dynamic through this active handling of the camera.

As for plot structure, the time of the movie seemed very confusing–in a very engaging way. The plot is somewhat structured by each interview with a different person speculating who/what Rosebud is. In many cases, these responses in the interviews only confuse the search for Rosebud. I found this to be reflected in the plot, since there were many points that seemed to divert from this main objective, particularly the opera arc, among others. In doing this, the film throws a lot at you, in a sort of watered-down, super early-on postmodernist way. I thought it was really cool how they played around with so many aspects of this movie, which made it all the more entertaining to watch!

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5 responses to “Cinematography and Plot Structure in Citizen Kane”

October 14, 2025

Ethan Zuo

I really like the part that you mention about the transitions in the movie. Citizen Kane if full of many transitions. You talked about the clean dissolves that match the shot from the following shot. It keeps the movie dynamic and the rest of the film re-cutting through Kane’s life. The sound bridges that connect two different scenes. We can hear applause cut into rain, and shouting voice turn into the sound from a printing press. It facilitates the moving forward of the film.
Time compression gets the most evident in the breakfast table montage. Each dissolve is not just first, then, next, lastly sequence. Rather, it is a relationship of time that curdles one dissolve at a time and transits the relation forward in Kane’s life.
You also mentioned about camera movement. The dolly shots and crane shot don’t just show off the techniques, they shift the audience’s focus from one scene to the other so that it cuts with intent of moving the story forward. When the camera moves to something, there can be an instantaneous story coming right up.
One thing you didn’t mention that I would like to add on is the newspaper as a giant fade-out transition It sprints through Kane’s life with total confidence, then the rest of the film keeps “re-cutting” that version through interviews and memories. There are many years in Kane’s life and his achievements, and it will be super hard if the director wants every single element in the film. In other words, Citizen Kane starts with a big transition and spends the movie using smaller, smarter ones to take it apart and talk to us about Kane’s life.

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October 14, 2025

Mary Frances Miller

Hi John,
I really like your analysis of the cinematography and plot structure in “Citizen Kane”. The way you outline how the story is presented is really interesting. I’m curious as to why you described the other plot lines such as the opera arc as diverting from the main objective. I had a different interpretation of the different plot lines.
Mr. Thompson is on a mission to find out what rosebud is, but to understand rosebud, we need to understand who Charlie Kane is. All of these different points in his life are centered around Kane’s development as a person from a champion of the common man to a selfish, lonely man. Kane pushes his desires onto everyone around him, losing them in the process. The rosebud represents his loss of innocence and his desire for true love, something he has never had in his whole life. The plotlines have a connecting thread of loss. Kane loses his friends, lovers, and his principles in the pursuit of love on “his terms”. I do agree that this movie throws a lot at you, and the complexity of the story makes it very entertaining!

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October 15, 2025

Andrew Cai

Hey John, I noticed the transitions in this movie as well! Welles utilized many transitional fades throughout the movie, seamlessly bringing us to a different time period or a different location. It’s almost like elliptical editing in a way, though its jumps in time/set are much more drastic. My favorite transition is by far the one that occurs at the beginning of the movie. When Mr. Thatcher first adopts Kane, we see a scene set during Christmas. Thatcher gifts Kane a sled (a replacement for Rosebud), and he says, “Merry Christmas…” The camera pans up to a nearby window, and now we see a much older Mr. Thatcher, who finishes the sentence by saying: “…and a happy new year!” Overall, Welles is extremely talented at showing the passing of time. You also bring up a good point about the interviews actually hurting the hunt for Rosebud’s meaning. Different characters had different opinions of Kane, which led to bias that skewed their retellings. For example, Mr. Leland must harbor some sort of resentment toward Kane, same with Susan. Their recountings of Kane’s life were told in a much more negative light than Mr. Bernstein’s. It’s so interesting how Welles can cohesively weld together so many storylines, and effectively (and meaningfully) compress a man’s 70+ year lifespan into 2 hours!

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October 18, 2025

Beatriz

Hey John! The transitions in this movie were very noticeable to me as well and I feel like that is a crucial feature for this movie being such an easy watch. The combination of dissolves and wipes creates a sense of rhythm that maintains continuity and eases such a fragmented plot. I believe that this contradiction (fragmented messy plot, but clean continuous editing) is one of the innovations taken by Welles that revolutionized how people understood cinema. Adding on to what you said about the cartoon-ish tone I find that the music and the sounds can be one of the features that enhances that, as it navigates that line between seriousness, melodrama and irony. About your comment on the structure, it made me notice how important it is for the story that there is not one single narrator but multiple, which creates this unreliable atmosphere that adds on to the viewer’s perception of Kane, who is telling the most accurate version? Lastly, the mobility of the cameras made me feel like we were inside the investigative gaze and created an immersive experience for the audience.

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December 5, 2025

Lindsay Taylor

I like your analysis of Citizen Kane, especially how you picked up on the film’s transitions and constantly moving camera. That’s honestly one of the first things that stuck with me, too, because the movie feels so active. Now, I feel like some movies throw all kinds of flashy editing at us, but Citizen Kane’s transitions still feel intentional and clever, rather than flashy for the sake of it. Also, the way you connect that visual style to the plot structure is such a good point. The movie’s whole search for “Rosebud” setup is almost like a trick, because each interview feels like it should clear things up, but instead everything just gets more confusing. It feels like the film is playing with the minds of both Thompson and the viewers. I also think these things tie directly into how Citizen Kane plays with the idea of legacy. The film is basically showing us how messy it is to try to boil a person down into one “true” narrative. It keeps looking like it’s guiding us toward a neat answer, whether through a clean visual transition or a new interview, but every time, it slips away. Kane’s life won’t fit into the story people keep trying to tell about him. I think that’s exactly why “Rosebud” hits so hard at the end. This real legacy (or at least the one he pictures for himself) is something private, ordinary, and invisible to all the people trying to define him from the outside.

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