Citizen Kane - Eric Nelson
Citizen Kane falls quite a bit short when talking about my all time favorites. I just can not get into black and white movies. Putting the absence of color aside this was a very well executed film. For the time and even today the use of lighting, aging make-up, and vast sets made this movie something to remember.
The idea of the American dream as being hollow does hold significance with film goers today. Due to the materialistic world we live in and my pessimistic outlook, the best I can do is say that people would like to think that they would choose real love over a material possession. Although I believe that most Americans today care more about money than anything else, I still think they would say otherwise, which leads me to believe they would realize the meaning of a hollow American dream.
“Citizen Kane is cited as a great film for its cinematography, symbolism, and message-all things that do not interest most film goers today. If you were to show Citizen Kane to a random bunch of people today, nobody would care.� This statement, sadly, holds great weight. Today’s movie goers watch movies not for the underlying meaning or symbolism, but rather for the story, to be entertained. No one would really care because no one would really understand. Even I got caught up in the story and the psychological factors of why Kane did the things he did, rather that realize the message of material things don’t make a person happy.
Comparing Citizen Kane to films of today I don’t really notice angle differences, but taking advantage of lighting is a huge part of this movie. Due to the film being in black and white the use of lighting was very important, where as today lighting is not as noticeable because we are distracted by colors.
I think today’s films jump scenes quite a bit more than Citizen Kane because they are so many more things happening that it is hard to stay at one scene for too long. It also has to do with keeping the audiences attention. People of today are fast pace and get bored easily so I don’t think the idea of long takes would work as well in today’s world.
It was a fair representation of Charles Foster Kane. He was a little boy taken from his parents at an early age to learn to be an adult and suddenly he had all of these rules to follow. So it is only expected that he would rebel against the norm off the time and not be interested in money. Also the fact that he felt unloved can explain why he is always trying to get people to love him. It also explains why he try’s to buy love, because money was put on a pedestal and he was never really exposed to real love so he didn’t know how else to get people to love him.