My extended hiatus.

Originally I'd conceived of taking a brief hiatus from regularly updating my blog here, unfortunately that brief hiatus--with the obvious demands of post-highschool summer activities, and the mountain of academic obligations I was quickly swamped with come college--ended up turning in to something much more extended. Most likely I'll still be unable to update here on a regular basis for some time, but for now I offer a token of reconciliation: a short essay I wrote for my Introduction to Cinema Studies class at New York University. It's certainly no Tolstoy, but hey, I've got time to improve.

Deep focus cinematography in service of the narrative in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane"

At the time of “Citizen Kane’s” release in 1941, the vast majority of American filmmakers found themselves confined to the usage of a relatively strict set of visual techniques. It was not until a variety of innovative visual and narrative techniques were displayed by Orson Welles’, in what eventually became known as his magnum opus, that American filmmakers of the time took it upon themselves to push more of the boundaries of classical narrative, cinematography, framing, and other filmmaking devices. Though Welles was innovative in the construction of his film’s narrative, framing, cinematography and many other components, one of the most significant advancements he made was with the development, popularization and use of deep focus. Deep focus cinematography is a visual technique that allows a director or cinematographer to keep the foreground, middle-ground and background all in focus, through the use of a large depth of field, allowing the viewer to see each plane sharply and recognize a greater range of details within the frame. Though many well-known directors of the time (including Eric von Stroheim, Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock) had already used deep focus to great effect by the time “Citizen Kane” was released, no other film that had yet to make such liberal and effective use of the technique. Additionally, Welles and Gregg Toland’s (his cinematographer) use of deep focus was much more than a simple parlor trick or vain demonstration of the extent of their technical abilities: rather, the use of deep focus served many valid and necessary narrative purposes throughout the course of the film.

“Citizen Kane” is, in part, a detective story. It recounts the life of Charles Foster Kane in flashbacks after he has died. This series of flashbacks to important episodes throughout Kane’s life are triggered by the interactions between a newspaper reporter (equally curious as to the motivations behind many of Kane’s actions as the audience) and several of Kane’s closest friends and confidants. In the end, it proves impossible for an outside observer to positively ascertain the nature, wills and desires of that Kane’s heart (as it would with any man). As a result, the film ends on a note of ambiguity. Despite this, the use of techniques such as deep focus allows the audience more comprehensive access into Kane’s psyche throughout the course of the film.

In one of the earliest scenes of the film, we see a flashback of Kane as a young boy. Having come into a large sum of money, his mother decides to place her adolescent son under the guardianship of Walter Parks Thatcher, a prominent banker. As Mrs. Kane sits at her dining room table with the man soon to replace her as Charles’ primary caretaker, her son is framed in the window behind the pair and to the left. The technique of deep focus allows each plane in the frame to remain in the focus simultaneously, which means the audience is able watch clearly as Mrs. Kane and Mr. Thatcher sign the documents that are to draw a definitive end to Charles’ pure and carefree existence and the youthful, carefree, and oblivious activities of the boy whose life has been, unbeknownst to him, decided conclusively for him. Unlike the newspaper reporter and others, the audience is able to simultaneously view the decisions’ of Kane’s mother and the party who is to be most significantly affected by those decisions, amplifying the deafening weight of those decisions. With the added knowledge of Kane’s eventual fate (provided by the March of Time newsreel in the first minutes of the film), the audience may connect their expanded knowledge of this event with its long term results, and is therefore better able to understand how Kane eventually turns out as he does; sad, empty and isolated from the world. Without the use of deep focus cinematography in this scene, Welles and Toland would have been unable to capture the dynamic in this scene between Mrs. Kane and her son, and the long reaching effects of both that dynamic in her actions, in a way that was both true and appropriate in relation to the rest of the film’s narrative. Through this use of deep focus, the viewing audience is allowed what would otherwise be an impossible view into the psychology of the enigmatic Charles Foster Kane.

Another scene later in the film is prompted by one of Mr. Bernstein’s flashbacks. Bernstein, one of Kane’s closest friends throughout the film, is shown reading the contract that stipulates the terms of Kane’s sale of his newspaper empire to another company. In the scene, Bernstein is seated on the far right, Thatcher on the far left, with a wide space in the middle containing a large vertical window situated atop a paneled wall. As Bernstein recites the terms of the contract, Kane walks into the frame from the right, and continues towards the center of the screen. As he walks towards the window, Kane’s height initially seems comparable, but as he nears the back wall he is quickly dwarfed, his head barely reaching the top of the paneled wall as he comes to a stop. This proves a valuable visual cue as to Kane’s internal state as he is forced to sign over ownership of his prized newspapers. Kane, a man driven for so long by the desire to succeed, is now reduced to selling off his acquisitions to survive. Through this visual trick in which Kane is physically dwarfed by the immense window, despite him initially appearing just as large and powerful as ever, the audience is afforded an understanding of his intense humiliation and disgrace. During this scene, the audience’s comprehension of Kane’s disappointment is punctuated by his pointed self-deprecation as he finally sits and signs the contract, explaining, “[y]ou know Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.” This understanding would not be possible without the use of deep focus cinematography, as it allows the audience to view clearly what is going on in each sector of the frame throughout the entire scene.

Through these two examples of how deep focus cinematography may assist the audience in understanding ideas within a film more deeply, we can begin to fathom how the function of this technique serves the overall narrative as a whole; enriching and furthering ideas that would otherwise be almost impossible to transmit. Further, this understanding of the function of deep focus within the narrative of “Citizen Kane” allows us to contemplate the function of other elements within this and other films, and the many ways in which those elements also serve to one’s viewing experience.