The perspective in Citizen Kane has crossed the line.

The perspective in Citizen Kane has crossed the line.

As a unique multimedia narrative form, movies have developed rapidly in the past 100 years. Based on Genette's narratology theory, this paper analyzes the most distinctive phenomenon of overlapping perspectives in the Oscar classic film Citizen Kane, so as to examine the uniqueness of this film more comprehensively.

I. Overview

Compared with literature, film, as a new art form, has attracted the attention of many researchers. To some extent, both of them have an impact on people's consciousness. On the other hand, as independent art forms, they also developed their own independent grammar and logic system. Therefore, the study of them should focus more on their characteristics.

It is no different from the traditional literary aesthetics to complete a moving in a movie. From the aesthetic form, there are striking similarities between the narration of literature and film, and the interaction between film and literature is an interactive and mutually beneficial process. The main narrative elements of movies and literature include three key elements: narrative subject, narrative object and narrative means. Both film and literature create or recreate a virtual space different from the real world by means of the perceptual characteristics of narration, and the existence of this space is an aesthetic representation or compensation for the real world.

Second, the introduction of narratology.

Narratology is one of the important theories of contemporary literary criticism. She applied the linguistic model to literary works and questioned the structural dimension of literary works. She focuses on the study of structural rules, narrative mechanism and various components that make up the story. Traditional literary criticism mainly focuses on the content and social function of articles. Applying narratology to literary criticism breaks the limitations of traditional literary criticism and may make the study of literary structure and stylistic means more prominent.

Genette absorbed the research results of todorov's narrative discourse. Narrative Discourse, published in 1972 and included in three sets of figures of speech, is his great contribution to the study of narratology. This paper takes Proust's novel Memories of Time Past as the research object, and summarizes the laws of literary narration. He analyzes narrative works from grammatical categories such as time, mode and voice, which essentially represent the relationship between story, narrative and narration? In his introduction, he first defined stories, narratives and narratives. His analysis focuses on narrative discourse and pays attention to the relationship between narrative discourse level and narrative story level. 1983 answer to writing "New Narrative Discourse"? Les and Dorrit? Gao an, Mick? Barr and other scholars' criticism of narrative discourse revised or further explained some of their own arguments.

Third, what is it? Beyond perspective?

In the process of Genette's research, he found that in many narrative works, the author's narrative angle would suddenly change. For example, the external perspective of the omniscient and omnipotent third person was initially adopted to grasp the whole from the overall situation, but sometimes it was suddenly changed to the external perspective of the first person because of the need of narrative or suspense.

In Genette's view, perspective crossing can be divided into two categories. He called one of them? Save the narration? Parallax means that the narrator deliberately hides some necessary information from the reader. Where is the traditional narrative from other provinces? In the internal perspective mode, an important action or idea focusing on the protagonist is omitted. It is impossible for the protagonist and the narrator not to know this action or idea, but the narrator deliberately hides it from the reader. ? However, this situation actually confuses the boundary between narrative perspective and narrative voice, and is not a real perspective crossing.

Genette called another perspective out of line? Overlap? (parallax), that is, the amount of information provided is greater than that allowed by the adopted viewing angle mode in principle. It can be expressed as the inner activity of the character, or the scene in which he is not present can be observed from an external perspective. This is a veritable cross-border perspective.

Fourth, the myth of the American dream? Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane tells the story of millionaire and publishing giant Charles? Fust？ At the beginning of the film, the story of Kane's life, Kane, lying on his deathbed in his luxurious palace in Florida? Xiadu? Medium. And in this paradise built by Kane himself, his life is coming to an end, and he is still mumbling? Rosebud? Kane spent his whole life in this loneliness. Then, a news documentary reporter was asked to find out the meaning of Kane's last word. After some probing, the reporter never found the meaning of Kane's last sentence. At the end of the film, many of Kane's relics were thrown into the stove and burned, including the sleigh that Kane liked very much when he was a child. It also said? Rosebud? . It turns out that no matter what ups and downs Kane's life has experienced, what he has never forgotten is always a simple and carefree childhood.

5. There is no leading role in the opening? The Perspective Characteristics of Citizen Kane

If you have seen this film, you will find that the shooting angle of this film is very rare in the film. Usually, in order to control the overall situation and unfold the narrative reasonably, movies will adopt the omniscient and omnipotent third-person perspective. From this perspective, the audience can see the actions of all the characters, hear their lines and even understand their thoughts through the voice-over, thus giving the audience a sense of pleasure that everything is under control. Even the mystery drama that is best at setting doubts and keeping the audience's appetite alive rarely adopts the first-person external perspective like Citizen Kane. Adopting this perspective means that the whole film is unfolded through the eyes of the narrator. Due to the external perspective, in the narrative process, the narrator's eyes only act as a camera, which truly reflects what he has seen and heard. It can't reflect the inner activities of the characters, which undoubtedly makes the audience need to devote themselves to finding the answers themselves. More interestingly, the protagonist Kane died at the beginning of the film, so Kane didn't mention his life in the whole film, but under the arrangement of the director, five people close to him told his life.

Thatcher is a banker and Kane's guardian, but their relationship is not good, so in Thatcher's eyes, from Charles? Foster. Judging from Kane's dangerous indomitable spirit when he attacked American tradition on issues such as private property, initiative and trying to get rich, and from the nature of his social beliefs, he is simply a * * * party member! ?

Bernstein is Kane's employee and friend, and the only one among the five interviewees who loves Kane unconditionally. From his eyes, we can see that Kane is a determined, energetic, honest and reliable person who has devoted his life to his career.

Leland was Kane's college classmate and the first reporter of his Inquirer, but eventually they parted ways. In the film, Leland describes Kane's personal life. In his description, the audience can find that Kane is a man with profound thoughts but lack of faith. He only has himself in his heart.

Susan was Kane's lover and later became his second wife. As a strong man, Kane only wants Susan to be what he wants, so in order to make Susan in his mind, he tries his best to make her an opera star. Under such pressure, Susan finally left Kane. In her narrative, we see a selfish, possessive person who pursues the ultimate love.

The last narrator is Readman, the housekeeper of Xiadu. He heard Kane's last words? Rosebud? In his eyes, Kane was an abandoned and lonely child, and when he grew up, he was isolated and unhappy.

However, because the five people who act as storytellers have different feelings for Kane and different perspectives and views on things, there are often several people who tell the same thing differently in movies. This is undoubtedly the director's careful arrangement: on the one hand, the contradictory stories of different narrators about the same thing will undoubtedly arouse the appetite of the audience and urge them to concentrate on pursuing the truth of the incident together; On the other hand, the director also uses this situation to illustrate that sometimes the excessive interpretation of the outside world is far from the party's own ideas. These people think they know Kane very well, but who can really understand his inner emptiness and loneliness?

6. Who is the commentator who is not present? The perspective in Citizen Kane has crossed the line.

If the audience watches the film carefully, it is not difficult to find that in some storytellers' stories, everything he tells happens when he is not present. In Andre? What is a Narrative Film by Gaudero also questioned the question from the perspective of Citizen Kane. He pointed out: Thatcher's narrative in Citizen Kane is very different from Bernstein's narrative in audio-visual performance. The former presents Thatcher from the outside, and we will hardly be surprised, because most flashbacks are like this, and the picture only shows us the scene of him as a witness. Instead, Bernstein's narrative begins with Kane and Leland arriving in front of the Inquirer by taxi. We heard their conversation, which was very strange, because the narrator Bernstein sat in a carriage full of equipment a few seconds later and followed his two friends into the scene. So he shouldn't be a witness at the scene before? He is regarded as the person who relayed the matter to Thompson, the reporter who interviewed him. ? In addition, there is a very obvious perspective that is out of line, that is, in Leland's narrative, there is a paragraph describing Kane's relationship with his first wife. In this short film, the director hints at the passage of time through the changes in the clothing of both husband and wife, and at the same time shows that the marriage between Kane and the president's niece quickly fell to the bottom after a short period of sweetness through the expressions from smile to indifference, as well as the continuous decrease of dialogue and the continuous indifference of tone. But in the picture at that time, only Kane and his wife, Leland, were not present. And what is the intention of this perspective crossing the line? Throughout the film, the director never asked Kane to tell his life personally, which will undoubtedly make the audience have a question: which is the real Kane? Although it helps to attract the attention of the audience, it will make the audience remember it deeply even after the movie is over. However, there are also weaknesses in the external perspective: there are many important scenes in Kane's life without a third party, such as his married life, and when the reporter went to interview Kane's life, Kane's first wife had died, so how to show Kane's first love life to the audience without both parties has become a very difficult problem. But in order to fully show all aspects of Kane's life, these events cannot be omitted. How to find a balance between the fluency of narrative and the rationality of story development is very important. In this case, the director can only tell him that he can't pass the cross-border perspective. Do you see it? Things. This practice has its own rationality, and it is also an important embodiment of the diversification of narrative techniques, which is worth learning.

Seven. conclusion

Olson Welles' film Citizen Kane has always been regarded as one of the greatest films in film history. Both film shooting techniques and narrative techniques are regarded as landmark works. This film has changed the way of Hollywood production, and Citizen Kane still shows its influence that cannot be ignored.

As ordinary viewers, they may not notice that the director's shooting perspective has changed in these paragraphs, but for those who have noticed, they may not be able to explain the reasons. I hope this article can let everyone know the director's intention and original intention by narrative method. In fact, due to the director's overall grasp of the whole film and the omnipresence of the lens, the phenomenon of cross-border perspective is rarely seen in the film. Citizen Kane is such a film with excellent narrative technique and shooting perspective, which is worthy of our analysis and interpretation by narratology.

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