Transcript Today`s Filmic Quandary:

Auteur
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The presumed or actual “author” of a film,
usually identified as the director.
Also sometimes used in an evaluative sense to
distinguish good filmmakers (auteurs) from bad
ones.
Can you think of any auteur? You may go see
his or her films for his or her “style”.
“I started at the top and
worked my way down.” –
Orson Welles
Orson Welles (1915-1985)
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Came from Live
Theatre and Mercury
Theatre, radio
CBS’s “War of the
Worlds”
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H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898)
Mercury Theatre’s The War of the Worlds (10/30/38)
War of the Worlds (2005) fiction-disaster film
Selected filmography for Orson Welles
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1942
1943
1944
1946
1946
1948
1948
1952
1955
1956
1958
1959
1962
1966
1967
1970
1970
1971
1972
1975
1979
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (dir, scr., prod.) (Oscar nod for Picture)
JOURNEY INTO FEAR (dir., prod., scr.)
JANE EYRE (prod., act.)
THE STRANGER (dir., act., scr.)
TOMORROW IS FOREVER (act.)
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (dir., act., prod., scr.)
MACBETH (prod., act., scr., dir.)
OTHELLO (dir., scr., act.)
MR. ARKADIN (dir., act., scr.)
MOBY DICK (act.)
TOUCH OF EVIL (dir., act., scr.)
COMPULSION (act.)
THE TRIAL (dir., act., scr.)
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (act.)
CASINO ROYALE (act.)
CATCH-22 (act.)
THE DEEP (scr., act., dir.)
LONDON (scr., act., dir.)
TREASURE ISLAND (act.)
F IS FOR FAKE (dir., scr.)
THE MUPPET MOVIE (act.)
Citizen Kane (1941)
RKO Budget of $700,000 not lavish by 1941
standards.
William
Randolph
Hearst
Hearst Castle in San Simeon will be
Kane’s Xanadu
10 Reasons Why Citizen Kane is
Considered One of the Greatest Films
of All Time:
1.
Narrative Structure
Structured like a mystery story, a search to penetrate a great
enigma. The mystery begins with the misty opening
sequence.
2. Cinematography (Gregg Toland)
In scenes depicting Kane as an old man, the camera is
often far away, making him seem remote,
inaccessible. Even when Kane is closer to the lens,
the deep-focus photography keeps the rest of the
world at a distance, with vast empty spaces between
him and other people
Gregg Toland (1904-1948)
Gregg Toland (1904-1948)
3. Art Design (Van Nest Polglase)
The film saved money by only showing parts of
sets rather than entire rooms. For example, the
office set consists only of a desk and two walls,
yet we seem to be in a huge luxurious office.
Similarly, in the Xanadu scenes, Welles spotlit an
oversized pieces of furniture, a sculpture, or a
fireplace, leaving the rest of the room in
darkness-as though it were too enormous to be
adequately illuminated. (The rooms were actually
sparsely furnished.)
4. Make-Up (Maurice Seiderman)
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Welles was required to age about 50 years during the course
of the story. As Kane grows older, his hair grays and recedes,
his jowls sag, his cheeks grow puffier, and the bags beneath
his eyes grow more pouch. A synthetic rubber body suit
suggest the increasingly flabby torso of an older man.
5. Musical Score (Bernard Herrmann)
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Hermann composed the film’s opera, Salommbo, in the style of
nineteenth-century French “Oriental” operas.
6. Casting
Dorothy Commingore’s brilliant performance of
Susan provides considerable warmth to an otherwise
cold and intellectual film. She is a study in
contradiction, screechy and pitiful at the same time.
Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975)
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7.Editing (Robert Wise)
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Budgetary considerations often determined the cunning editing
strategies of the film, which was edited by Robert Wise. In the
political campaign sequence, cutting is used to hide the fact that the
thousands of inhabitants in the huge hall were not real. By
association, they seem real.
Time elapses through dissolves-showing parallel images of different
years.
8. Sound
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Long and extreme long-shot sounds are fuzzy and remote; close-up
sounds are crisp, clear, and generally loud. High angle shots are
often accompanied by high-pitched music and sound effects; low
angle shots by brooding and low-pitched sounds. Sounds are
dissolved and overlapped like a montage sequence.
9. Special Effects (Vernon L. Walker)
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Miniatures, matte shots, double and multiple
exposures, optical printing.
10. Director
Welles frequently used lengthy takes in his staging, choreographing the
movements of the camera and the characters rather than cutting to a
series of separate shots. Even in relatively static scenes such as this, these
lengthy takes provide the mise en scene with a sense of fluidity and
dynamic change.
Wells was strongly drawn to the lighting theories of such theatrical designers
as Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia and to many of the techniques of
the German expressionist movement. Welles was also influenced by the
moody low-key photograph of John Ford’s Stagecoach.
Using the “10 Reasons” from
our discussion on Kane, and
the criteria we have used
already in this course, discuss
whether you feel Citizen Kane
lives up to the title as the
greatest film of all time.