Auteur

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)

Came from Live Theatre and Mercury Theatre, radio CBSs War of the Worlds

H.G. Wellss The War of the Worlds (1898) Mercury Theatres The War of the Worlds (10/30/38) War of the Worlds (2005) fiction-disaster film

Selected filmography for Orson Welles

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 Kanes 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)

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. Hermann composed the films opera, Salommbo, in the style of nineteenth-century French Oriental operas.

5. Musical Score (Bernard Herrmann)

6. Casting Dorothy Commingores 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)

7.Editing (Robert Wise)

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. 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.

8. Sound

9. Special Effects (Vernon L. Walker)

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 Fords 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.