Behind-the-scenes Production of Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane, based on orson welles's new york newspaper tycoon William Lang Dolf Hearst (1863- 195 1), combined with his childhood experiences and feelings of living in other people, created the image of Charles Foster Kane. Herman Mankiewicz, the co-writer of the play, has a close personal relationship with Hearst and is a friend of his mistress and movie star Marion Davis. The film was shot in secret, but Hearst protested because he thought it was an attack on himself by innuendo and tried to buy the film for $800,000 to ban its release. Wells was very shocked to hear the news. He had only one way to save it, and that was to try his best to show the film in a small scale and spread it by word of mouth. Sure enough, the high praise of some colleagues made Lei resist the pressure, otherwise this work will be preserved in the memory of a few people forever. It was not until the end of World War II that the film was reissued. It was first paid attention to in Europe, and then broadcast on American TV.

In fact, the way the film tells the story is far more valuable than the story it tells. The film consists of six flashbacks with internal logic. These flashbacks are not part of the puzzle, but the onion peeling from the outside in. For the first time, the film cuts the lens into the level of human nature and makes an in-depth discussion on human nature. This film can be regarded as an allegory of American personal struggle.

The film was nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture, director, leading role, photography, recording and music. However, due to the historical background at that time and the real characters involved in the film, it only won an Oscar for best original screenplay.

executant

Every character in Citizen Kane seems to be tailor-made for actors-not only the protagonist, but also the housekeeper Raymond, the politician Getty, Kane in childhood and so on. Most of the actors in this film come from the Crystal Company in Wales, which is good at radio and stage plays. They have almost no experience in film performance, but except for a few close-ups, all the actors' performances are very natural. Kane, played by orson welles himself, is still a model of film performance. However, the actor's superb performance can't arouse the applause of the ordinary audience, because there is no scene in the film where the actor can show off his acting skills, but if the audience compares the script with the film, they will find that the actor has indeed made a contribution.

Take pictures of ...

The achievement of this epoch-making film is also reflected in the shooting technology. For the first time, this film uses a large depth of field lens (that is, a deep focal length lens), a large number of low-angle overhead lenses and black and white light and shadow with intensity contrast. The composition of Citizen Kane is basically a classical triangle, but there is an almost natural relaxation rhythm when the camera changes and stays. In addition, the perfect montage compression time is used to expand the film capacity and make it reflect the major events in the protagonist's life concisely. For example, the process of Kane's divorce from his first wife, from marriage to divorce, took eight years, but the film only used six shots to express it.

It was Gregg Toland who took the picture for the film. Tholander was an accomplished photographer in Hollywood when he joined the crew, but the shooting difficulty was beyond his expectation. As we all know, those ultra-low angle shots were Wells' idea. When the photographer said that the machine was on the ground and could not be put down, Wells cut the floor and buried the camera.

Makeup editor

The makeup of Citizen Kane is rarely mentioned, but can you guess the real age of each actor without checking the background information? We marveled at Nicole Kidman's fake nose in The Hours, but it is said that Wells never showed his real nose in his movies. Although the makeup of the film has not completely changed like that of playing an orangutan, the spirit can be seen everywhere. With the breakfast scene spanning nine years and the subtle changes in the ages of the two actors, it can be seen that the makeup artist has a perfectionist tendency.

Robert wise once revealed that Wells rarely participated in film editing (this feature led to the destruction of his second work, The Amberson Family, by the film company after its completion). In order to make the documentary more realistic, Wise came up with a unique trick, polishing the film on the concrete floor and erasing the "flowers" that appeared after the projector shuttled too many times.

In order to achieve the special effects pursued by Wells, the film uses a lot of special effects shots. There are hundreds of scenes in the film, but the setting fee is only $654.38 million+10,000 (the price at that time). It is impossible to achieve good results by "burning money", and we must win skillfully like The Lord of the Rings.

Wells made Kane, in many ways, as if no one had ever made a movie. For example, at the beginning and end of the film, the practice at that time was to put a large number of staff names in front. From the perspective of an ordinary audience, will he be interested in these names before watching the movie? "Kane" moved them to the end of the film, and attached pictures to the name of the starring role, which was especially in line with the audience's psychology. Although this incident is small, it can be seen that he is disorganized in film creation.

Sound montage

Bernard herrmann (1911-1975), the composer of Citizen Kane, is also a member of the Crystal Troupe. The legendary composer composed 54 works in his life. In his solo work Citizen Kane, his partner orson welles Herman showed his ability to deal with complex acoustics and music, created montage music that complements the camera, and changed the scene through acoustics. His soundtrack is like a loyal servant of the plot, and he shows outstanding talent in some paragraphs: he wrote a French aria similar to Marcelne's opera for Susan, a typical Broadway tune for Newspaper Celebration, and was nominated for best original music at the Oscar. The film soundtrack masters later shined in Hitchcock's place, including 1960 classic "Psychopaths".

Nonlinear narration

In terms of film narrative techniques, Citizen Kane broke the linear narrative techniques of previous film sequences, adopted a nonlinear multiple narrative structure, and used narrative techniques such as flashback and interpolation to express the characters from multiple angles and units, making the characters more vivid. Although this brand-new narrative technique is common today, it was unprecedented at that time, thus becoming the dividing line between modern films and traditional films.

The non-linear narrative technique was not initiated by Wells, and several Hollywood movies have tried it before, but Wells took this overlapping bedstead form to the extreme, with a lot of time jumping and overlapping in each paragraph, and many visions, dialogues and themes echoed each other in different paragraphs. Wells even called Rosebud a "liar". Rosebud's motivation is just a gimmick of the plot. The exploration of this gimmick makes the narrative take shape, closely links the chaotic details of the whole story, and provides a dramatic question to catch the audience, which makes the film have the mode of detective film.