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Loss of Childhood in Orson Welles Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane by Orson Welles was released September 5th, 1941, and is known as one of the greatest films in cinema history. In my opinion, Citizen Kane was the blueprint to many cinematographic elements and had a way of moving the story forward that captivated the audience. Citizen Kane is about the rise and fall of publishing magnate Charles Foster Kane, and throughout the film we see many pivotal moments that define the trajectory of his life through cinematography. I specifically wanted to focus on how the “Loss of Childhood,” is a motif not just within the film but within the main character itself, Charles Foster Kane. “I don't think any word can explain a man’s life,” Mr. Tompson (William Alland) explains to the journalists/ crew that are helping go through and throw away Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) belongings after he died. This quote is within the final scene of the film, and it sums up how nobody within the film could truly understand what Kane’s final words meant, “Rosebud.” This takes you back to the very beginning of how the scene starts black and white, and we see many eerie Imposing shots all over Kane's home, Xanadu. Which is visualized to the audience as abandoned/and or something is “upside down” or wrong here at Xanadu. Fast forward, we see Kane take his final breath with a close up of his mouth whispering “Rosebud” before he sadly passes away. This whole film then takes you through the flashbacks of Charles Foster Kane’s life to figure out what this word could have meant to him, and mid film we the audience get a flashback of a pivotal moment in Kane’s life that pieced together what “Rosebud” meant. This flashback, in a deep focus shot, takes you back during the wintertime to a young Charles Foster, who is playing in the snow with his sled, unaware that his parents and Mr. Thatcher signed a form to take Charles away from home, so that he could become wealthy and have a better life. So, Charles grows up and he becomes wealthy and owns his own newspaper in New York called the inquirer, but in the hindsight of things it was very hard for Charles to have love for himself throughout the film. We see this through his marriages, loss of friendships, and enemies made along the way, but as the audience we still couldn’t understand how this cinematically could have connected with his final words. So, In the final scene, which is my focus on why this film is a motif for loss of childhood, we see all of Kane’s panting, statutes, and wealthy assets that he acquired while alive being thrown into the fire, and the camera pans in to focus on the very last item we see get thrown into the fire. The last item to be thrown into the fire was Charles’s childhood sleigh that he was playing with in the flashback. As the camera is panning close up to the sleigh as it’s burning, we see the name of the sleigh is “Rosebud” as the words are slowly burning as the film ends. My idea is this, “Rosebud” was a metaphor to symbolize Kane’s lost childhood that he could never get back, and the film does a tremendous job using these cinematic elements I described early to help move the story forward for me and, make the connections that Orson Welles wanted the audience to understand. Overall, I can argue that Charles Foster Kane throughout his life was trying to cling on to the memories of his childhood, yearning for that time before being thrusted into his “greatness,” and that is my biggest take away from this cinematic masterpiece.

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Citizen Kane - Rosebud Scene (10/10) | Movieclips

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The Difficult Transitions from the Silent Film Era to the “Talkies” Era Shown in Singin' In the Rain

On April 11, 1952, Singin’ in the Rain was released and directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. At first, I always thought of Singin’ In Rain as this very aesthetically pleasing, joyous musical, but after going into depth about the film in class it truly has a sophisticated exploration of cinema's evolution. The film overall comments on the intertextual references, artistic inheritance, technological change, and the anxieties that accompany creative reinvention. On today’s padlet I want to talk about and explain how the difficult transitions from the silent film era to the “talkies” era is shown in Singin' in the Rain that communicates to the audience the revolutionary aspects and labor of a new cinema that we don’t always see today. A central theme in Singin’ in the Rain is transformation; of film, performance, and identity.

I choose to focus on the scene linked above because it vividly shows the process of trying to adapt within the new age of cinema. In the scene we see a full shot of this chaos happening with the production, staging, Don and Lina, the recorder, and the director trying to adapt to the creation and technology of sound with a film. In doing so,  Lina is having trouble saying and recording her lines through the microphone wired to pick up all sounds, to create the talking film aspect within the film. We see the director then start to get frustrated because he is constantly having to adjust and explain the way the microphone works to Lina, and has had to move the microphone on 3 different occasions. With it overall just not working out in Lina’s favor as the scene ends with her unfortunately falling over because the mic wire was pulled from underneath her. This scene dramatizes not only the chaos of this transition but also the artistic and cultural consequences of having to adapt to popular culture.

We see this through characters like Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont because they are forced to adapt, but while Don evolves successfully,  Linda resists change, which in a way symbolizes a fading era. After watching the film, the difficulty portrayed through the characters, staging, production, directing, and recording, is showing the audience the labor, technology and transformations that film as a whole was going under. In all to highlight the artistic inheritance, technological change, and the anxieties that accompany creative reinvention within Hollywood film. In the end, I will always love Singin’ in the Rain and the film does a tremendous job showing a reflection on cinema medium’s past and future!

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Singin' in the Rain | Lina Lamont vs. The Mic | Warner Bros. Entertainment

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The Cinematic Choices Made in The 400 Blows By Francois Truffaut

This week we were introduced to a new movement in cinema called “The French New Wave.” Which is arguably the most important moment in film history because it foregrounds the director and their voice, as well as artistic experimentation. Some elements and characters of the French New Wave include long takes, jump cuts, favor fragmented or disjunctive editing( reminding us we’re watching a movie, and realism( by way of untidy endings and inclined plots). On November 16, 1959,  we were introduced to Francois Truffaut’s ( a Parisian auteur film director) The 400 Blows film.  The 400 Blows is a critical landmark of the French New Wave, and is essentially a film that revolutionized cinema through its innovative choices of storytelling and style.

I want to focus on the scene above because, in my opinion, throughout the whole film, this scene in particular is very emotionally charged through the cinematic elements. So, we start off with the camera having a medium close up on Antoine Doinel, our young protagonist, putting on his jacket, to then jump cut to people including Antoine getting on the back of a barred police van. As soon as the police car shuts and starts driving away, we hear a score start up in the background and the tone of this music is almost like a sad lullaby. We also see how the scene goes from having high lighting from the police station lights to a medium dark lighting, really only focusing on Antoine. Overall, the rest of scene consists of jump cut going back and forth with Antoine holding onto the bars looking out in the night of paris, but with each new cut we slowly get closer and closer to Antoine face as we see him react to being taken to jail, and the scene ends with a close up of Antoine having tears blink down his face.

After I cried watching the scene, I kept thinking in my head, why Truffaut made these filmic choices to make me feel as the audience, the emotion I had.  When I break down the cinematography in this scene, I see how the bars on the police van window are a visual metaphor, of how Antonie is literally imprisoned, but the bars symbolize the societal constraints that confine him. This includes his family neglect and abuse from his parents, the mistreatment of school authority and the justice system. The camera and editing are capturing the emotional isolation Antoine feels, which reflects the New Waves’s focus on realism and the personal experience aspect Truffaut wants films to have more of.

When it comes to the lighting and sound(score) in the scene, they in my opinion, worked together in shaping the scene’s atmosphere. The naturalistic, low- key lighting with the streetlight around Paris, along with the slow lullaby-like music in the background creates a lonely and cold mood.  These elements choices surrounding Antoine, emphasizes to the audience his loneliness and detachment from the world outside, and while this grounds the scene in realism, it invites me as the viewer to also experience Antoine’s pain directly. Antoine’s silent but loud tears convey a sense of innocence lost and betrayal within the world around him.

Overall, this scene exemplifies how filmic element choices can convey deep emotional and thematic content. Through its innovative use of cinematography, lighting, editing, and sound, the scene captures the essence/ rebellion of conventional cinematic storytelling by emphasizing personal, emotional truth over spectacle in film. Capturing the essence of the French New Wave, a movement that transformed cinema by embracing realism, youth perspectives, and authentic storytelling.

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Padlet on Do The Right Thing- Maiya Ellis 

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Padlet on Do The Right Thing- Maiya Ellis 

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How The “racial slur montage” scene utilizes the filmic elements to address race and ideology

Do The Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee is an auteur film that explores race, community, and conflict on a hot summer day in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.  In my eyes the film shows a vibrant mainly black community full of life and love but, with the anxieties of racism, inequality, and frustration between different racial groups, it shows the thin line between what's considered doing what is right or what is wrong. I want to analyze the racial slur scene above, and how it utilizes the filmic elements to address race and Ideology, but first, I want to take a different approach to how I introduce the scene. Below I want you to read each monologue from each person, all from different racial backgrounds (Black, Italian, Latino, White, Asian), and watch the scene together. Think about it, sit with it, and I will take you through a discussion/analysis of purpose and meaning behind the race and ideology of this scene.

Mookie (Black): “Dago, wop, garlic-breath, guinea, pizza-slinging, spaghetti-bending, Vic Damone, Perry Como, Luciano Pavarotti, Sole Mio, nonsinging motherfucker.”

Pino (Itatlian): “You gold-teeth, gold-chain-wearing, fried-chicken-and-biscuit-eatin', monkey, ape, baboon, big thigh, fast-running, high jumping spear chucking, three-hundred-sixty- degree-basketball-dunking spade Moulan Yan, Take your fuckin’ piece of pizza and go the fuck back tor Africa.”

Stevie (Latino):  “You slant-eyed, me-no-speak-American, own every fruit and vegetable stand in New York, Reverend Moon, Summer Olympics '88,Korean kick-boxing son of a bitch.

Officer (White): Goya bean-eating, fifteen in a car, thirty in an apartment, pointed  shoes, red-wearing, Menudo, meda- meda Puerto Rican cocksucker. Yeah you!”

Korean Clerk(Asian):  It's cheap, I got a good price for you, Mayor Koch, "How I'm doing," chocolate-egg-cream-drinking, bagel and lox, B'nai B'rith asshole.”

Now, in this scene we see the cinematography of quick cuts between each character within a tight close- up frame, facing the camera directly. As each person is saying their racial slurs and stereotypes about how they feel about each other, they are essentially breaking the fourth wall to force the audience into this confrontational proximity with the racist language spoken, making us as the viewer uncomfortable. Because the camera doesn't move, the audience gets that visual feel of being trapped in the crossfire of each insult. I think Spike Lee and cinematographer Ernest Dickerson decided to do this because it reflects the ideological entrapment of racial thinking, suggesting that prejudice is not just spoken but performed based on each racial group's thoughts of one another.

This montage mimics a cyclical nature of racial prejudice of how each group attacks another and how it is still continuous even in today's world. The scene ends with Mister Senor Love Daddy, the local DJ cutting in to say, “ Yo!  Hold up!  Time out!  Time out!  Y'all take a chill.  Ya need to cool that shit out... and that’s the truth, Ruth.” Love Daddy in a way is almost like the referee between to crossfire, and with his calm voice and smooth jazz he breaks the montage’s aggression. Serving as a brief moral center, but it's still not a solution for the racial tension. Spike Lee and Dickerson choose to have this issue unresolved because he wants the audience to see how everybody coming from different backgrounds is not always going to see eye to eye and how racial ideology circulates through everyday stereotypes.

Overall, In Do The Right Thing, Lee critiques how ideology operates by turning people into categories, stereotypes, and enemies. This scene functions as a cinematic mirror, reflecting how deeply racism is embedded in the consciousness of all characters- regardless of race and ethnicity. It also uses the filmic elements not just to depict racism, but to implicate the audience in it as well.

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How We See Leonard's Truth Through His Fractured Mind of Perception, Reality, and Memory

“So you lied to yourself to be happy, there's nothing wrong with that, we all do it. Who cares if there’s a few little details you’d rather not remember.” This is the opening line to the pivotal confrontation scene between Teddy Gammell and Leonard Shelby in Memento(2000) by director Christopher Nolan.  In this sense, Christopher Nolan uses the filmic elements  to show the central themes of memory, identity, and self-deception shown through Leonard's fragmented mind. Throughout Memento we follow character Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) through a end to beginning chronology editing order, who is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty, however, of locating his wife's killer is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why. But, as the audience we start to question what’s the real truth and reality of Leonard’s conflict, and I think this scene truly shows just how memory, perception, and reality is really played with in Leonard’s mind.

After Teddy explains to Leonard that he creates and makes up his own truth, The framing of the camera often brings Leonard and Teddy into these tight close-ups and over- the shoulder shots of Teddy giving him the hard core truth and reality of  how 1. How the Sammy story is really him. 2. Leonard’s wife is the one who has diabetes and needs Insulin shots 3. He was the one that truly killed his wife with the Insulin. In this part of the scene, where all this information is being revealed, Leonard is constantly explaining how this information isn’t true. But, Teddy explains how “Yeah like you tell yourself over and over again, conditioning yourself to remember, learning through repetition.”  With Teddy revealing these uncomfortable truths, we see many cuts jumping from the conversation to flashbacks of what seems to be the truth and what Leonard is believing/ perceiving in his mind, what happened. This editing reflects Leonard’s inability to integrate his past, his present, and his identity into a coherent whole.

Teddy wraps up his confrontation of truth by 4. He explains how he was the one who helped Leonard find the original John G that broke in, made him hit his head, and molested his wife . 5. Teddy expresses how he has been giving Leonard, “A reason to live and you were more than happy to help,” by keeping him in this cycle of trying to find and kill John G.  This is because Teddy explains how “I was so convinced you would remember,  but you didn’t remember, like nothing ever sticks, like this won’t stick.” With him saying this, there is a close up of the polaroid of him smiling all blood, pointing to himself, after he killed the original John G. This visually shows how not only is Teddy helping and manipulating Leonard to keep his own perception, reality, and memory of the truth, but, we see Leonard also manipulate himself to stay in his own cycle of perception, reality, and memory of what happened to his wife in his mind. Teddy closes the scene by saying “ You don’t want the truth, you make up your own truth,” and this statement in my opinion sums up what the whole scene was trying to communicate.

This scene overall visually and aurally embodies Leonard’s fractured  sense of perception and his struggle to define reality through his unreliable memory, reality, and perception. This cinematic work allows the audience to see Leonard’s fractured perception, and how we cannot be confident of what’s true, what’s remembered, or what’s invented. In this scene, the confrontation becomes more than plot, it becomes the moment where Leonard’s constructed reality collides with the possibility of truth.

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Memento (6/7) Movie CLIP - You Make Up Your Own Truth (2000) HD