Citizen Kane
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Citizen Kane
Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) is one of the films that brought several new ways, which were quiet unusual in the era of 1940s, to make and watch movies. Based on the real life of William Randolph Hearst, who was a powerful newspaper magnate and publisher, Citizen Kane is a story about the life of a multi-millionaire newspaper publisher, Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles), who once accomplishes almost everything he deserves – he was made by his mother to deserve them, but loses more than everything back except money. To describe the entire seventy-years life of a man in a two-hours film uniquely, Welles uses several elements as follow: using a newsreel, the continuity of flashbacks, and setting a deputy of dead man.
First of all, Welles put a ten-minute newsreel titled News on the March at the beginning of the film, which is an overview of Kane’s life, to inform us who Kane is briefly. By this way, Welles doesn’t need to spend too much time of the two-hours movie to tell us about some general ideas or facts which are not the main things he wants to talk about, but which are somehow important to get to know about a man. Therefore, he can deal with the main points more deeply that he wants to talk about throughout the rest of the movie. For example, the newsreel has an politician’s speaking in front of a crowd that says “The words of Charles Foster Kane are menace to every working man in this land,” and continues, “He is today what he had always been – and always will be – a fascist!” This scene is not a main thing that Welles wants to talk about throughout the movie, but it is helpful to tell us what other people think or say about Kane.
Secondly, the flashbacks in Citizen Kane are presented in order throughout Kane’s life even though all flashbacks are from different individuals. For example, the second flashback, which is from the interview with the manager of Kane, Mr. Ber...