3. Citizen Kane
Orson Welles
1941

5. What are the first images we see?

15. What do the opening film
images tell us?

17. Caged

18. Gilded

19. Gilded
• What does Kane collect?

20. Gilded
• What does Kane collect?
• statues

21. Gilded
• What does Kane collect?
• statues
• animals

22. Gilded
• What does Kane collect?
• statues
• animals
• people

23. Gilded

24. Gilded

25. Gilded

26. Gilded

27. Gilded

28. Gilded

29. Gilded

30. Gilded

32. Mise-en-scène, character, themes

33. Mise-en-scène, character, themes
• After opening sequence, how are we
introduced to Kane’s life?

34. Mise-en-scène, character, themes
• After opening sequence, how are we
introduced to Kane’s life?
• Newsreel

35. Mise-en-scène, character, themes
• After opening sequence, how are we
introduced to Kane’s life?
• Newsreel
• Images, words, people’s
recollections, memories, reflections
(distorted mirrors?)

37. Words-Images
The Impossible Truth
Memory is Inaccurate

38. • Words cannot fully describe what we remember;
memory fails. Words are imprecise in what they
describe.
• Interpretation: people use different words to recall
experience; always different and made complicated
by one’s own relation to the historical moment
• Newspapers (spin, bias, and gossip, a particular
POV)
• The Newsreel (movies!) that tells “the life” of
Kane…does it?

39. mise-en-abyme

41. Why does Kane (re)collect?
What is he hoping to retrieve?

42. Why does Kane (re)collect?
What is he hoping to retrieve?
• A mother’s love

44. If he seeks his mother’s lost love, what
does he seek from his father-figures?

45. If he seeks his mother’s lost love, what
does he seek from his father-figures?
• Death
• Despises Thatcher (surrogate father)

47. In his own words . . .

48. In his own words . . .
• Kane’s words fail him
• Declaration of Principles—failure, or at least,
inaccurate
• Dying word—Rosebud (Do we ever really know
what Rosebud meant to Kane? We know it is a
sled, but…)
• (Rumor: William Randolph Hearst nickname for
his girlfriend’s, Marion Davies, genitalia)
• Other people’s words—Thatcher’s written diary
begins the story of Kane

50. Who do we Trust?

51. Who do we Trust?
Kane? Bernstein? Leland? Susan? Thatcher?The Press?

52. Who do we Trust?

53. Who do we Trust?
• What is trust? What does it mean “to trust”?
• Trust:
• Trust: to feel safe, loved, protected
• Financial arrangement established for children at early
age—but at what cost? ‘Trust-fund’ babies.
• Trust: Business arrangement, monopoly; all control in the
hands of a single power

54. Who do we Trust?
But aren’t all relationships—family, marriage, business, friendship
—financial relationships?

56. Cinematic Relationships
• The Triangular Pattern
• Oedipal Complex
• Son loves mother (doesn’t know it is his mother)
• Son kills father to have mother
• Discovers his lover is his mother (taboo)
• Blinds himself when he realizes the truth

57. Cinematic Relationships
Theory: To avoid incest taboo, boy
displaces desire onto other objects
and/or people.
In truth, son blinds himself to his
mother’s love by transferring love
elsewhere

58. Cinematic Relationships
Triangular Patterns echo Kane’s Oedipal Complex
His Search

59. Cinematic Relationships
Triangular Patterns echo Kane’s Oedipal Complex
His Search

60. Cinematic Relationships
Triangular Patterns echo Kane’s Oedipal Complex
His Search

61. Cinematic Relationships
Triangular Patterns echo Kane’s Oedipal Complex
His Search

62. Cinematic Relationships
Triangular Patterns echo Kane’s Oedipal Complex
His Search

63. Cinematic Relationships
Triangular Patterns echo Kane’s Oedipal Complex
His Search

64. Cinematic Relationships
Triangular Patterns echo Kane’s Oedipal Complex
His Search

65. Cinematic Relationships
Triangular Patterns echo Kane’s Oedipal Complex
His Search

66. Cinematic Relationships
Triangular Patterns echo Kane’s Oedipal Complex
His Search

67. Cinematic Relationships
Triangular Patterns echo Kane’s Oedipal Complex
His Search

69. Cinematic Love Triangles

70. Cinematic Love Triangles

71. Cinematic Love Triangles
? Ho
ge ma
a ge?
om
H
?
age
om
H

72. Cinematic Love Triangles
? Ho
ge ma
a ge?
om
H
?
age
om
H

74. Mise-en-scène and character
Susan
• Analyzing character through theme of
collecting and caging

75. Mise-en-scène and character
Susan

76. Mise-en-scène and character
Susan

77. Mise-en-scène and character
Susan

78. Mise-en-scène and character
Susan

79. Mise-en-scène and character
Susan

80. Mise-en-scène and character
Susan

81. Mise-en-scène and character
Susan

82. Mise-en-scène and character
Susan

83. Mise-en-scène and character
Susan

85. Bird Cage
Susan: Mise-en-scène Notes

86. Bird Cage
Susan: Mise-en-scène Notes
• The British sometimes refer to a woman as a “bird”
• Susan is the “songbird” and “love-bird” caught in a Lover’s Nest (headlines)
• Kane creates little shadow-bird images (the rooster) on the wall for her—
fore-“shadowing” things to come
• Her bedroom wallpaper has little animals on it
• When she tries to commit suicide we see a close-up of Susan’s face on the
pillow, lighting creates shadows as if prison/cage bars across her face.
• Remember: lighting is mise-en-scène
• The Cockatoo during the Butler’s recounting: birds’s screech sounds like her singing
and talking
• When Gettys blackmails Kane for his affair with Susan, he tells him he will send him
to Sing-Sing