Johnson, William. "Orson Welles: Of Time and Loss." Film Quarterly (Autumn, 1967). JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia. 27 Nov. 2008.<ttp://proxy.library.upenn.edu:2097/stable/1211027?&Search=yes&term=citizen&term=welles&term=orson&term=kane&term=toland&term=gregg&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoAdvancedSearch%3Fq0%3Dcitizen%2Bkane;f0%3Dall;c0%3DAND;q1%3Dorson%2Bwelles;f1%3Dall;c1%3DOR;q2%3Dgregg%2Btoland%2B;f2%3Dall;c2%3DAND;q3%3D;f3%3Dall;wc%3Don;Search%3DSearch;sd%3D;ed%3D;la%3D;jo%3D&item=7&ttl=571&returnArticleService=showArticle>.

   In his article, Orson Welles: Of Time and Loss, William Johnson evaluates the major works of Orson Welles, stating that Welles' "films are a triumph of show over substance. His most memorable images seem like elephantine labors to bring forth mouse-size ideas" (14). Citing examples from Falstaff, Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, The Trial, Arkadin, Stranger, Magnificent Ambersons, and Othello, Johnson points out that the success of each of Welles' films has depended upon his ability to balance a multitude of opposites - juxtaposing sophistication against simplicity, realism with expressionism, introversion and extroversion, and clarity with confusion to render Welles' style not easy to generalize (24).
     Johnson contends that Welles' treatment of the age-old theme of lost innocence in Citizen Kane earned this film its reputation for innovation. At the relatively young age of 25, Welles' primary achievement in Citizen Kane was the full development of techniques which married narrative structure with cinematographic style to a depth not previously seen. Employing wide-angle perspective, long takes, sudden cuts, complex leaps in chronology, short vignettes, and other techniques, Welles balances all manner of opposites to explore the private and public persona of the character, Kane (14). The narrative structure superimposes a reporter's investigation into Rosebud over flashbacks depicting the recollections of Kane's acquaintances. In this manner, Welles takes the viewer from Kane's end to his beginning, with leaps in time throughout the film (19). Told from seven different perspectives, i.e. five interviewees, a reporter, and the "God's-eye-view," Welles combines opposites and contradictions to reveal Kane's story. In successive scenes, Welles shifts from stillness to movement, from silence to loud noise, from darkness to light, all of which makes the entire film look and sound quite modern decades after it was shot (14, 19).

 

Naremore, James. Magic world of Orson Welles. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. 65-101.
    James Naremore’s chapter on Citizen Kane in his book The Magic World of Orson Welles, discusses the question of authorship in Citizen Kane and leads the reader in a scene by scene description and analysis of the film. This analysis discusses many aspects of the film including but not limited to: themes, stylistic technique, camera movement, political bent, relationship to Hearst’s life, and psychological components of characters. Naremore’s chapter concludes with a quick description of the reactions of Hollywood, Hearst and Welles to the release of Citizen Kane.
     In his analysis, Naremore explains how camera movements in Citizen Kane create a voyeuristic stylistic motif. In numerous scenes, the camera moves in towards the action and then is thwarted by an object, often a door, wall or window, which blocks the shot. The shot then features a dissolve following which the camera is able to move in closer towards the action. This persistent camera movement through tangible obstacles reflects the camera’s main function as “ a restless, ghostly observer” which seeks to probe into the private life of Kane while the obstacles function to disturb the audience’s curiosity and constantly remind them that they are watching a film. Welles constant reminders to the audience, that they are watching a movie serves to establish a second layer of doubt, than that already seeded by the plot of Citizen Kane, upon the truthfulness of all reporting and media. The voyeuristic stylistic motif is enhanced by the wide angle, deep focus cinematography. As Kane becomes increasingly isolated, wide-angle deep focus shots appears more frequently to create a feeling of separation from Kane in the audience. Even when there are no tangible obstacles in the way of the camera, the camera’s initial inquisitiveness seems trumped by the vast expanses depicted in many of the later shots between Kane and others at Xanadu. The deep focus shots in Citizen Kane also serve to give a gaudy and sensational view of Kane’s private life by allowing the viewer to see many layers of action in each shot in a highly voyeuristic manner. Naremore also discusses how Citizen Kane can be seen as a partial autobiography of Orson Welles. Evidently, Welles’ focus on Kane’s infantile anger is modeled after his own reputation as an “enfant terrible.” Additionally, Kane was raised by a guardian and modeled the character of Raymond after his own butler. The parallels between the story of Kane and his own life allowed Welles to focus the story on the psychology of Kane and less on Kane’s politics and newspaper empire.

Carringer, Robert L. Making of Citizen Kane / Robert L. Carringer.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 16-35.

       In his book The Making of Citizen Kane, Robert Carringer dedicates one chapter to the history of the scripting of the film. Carringer explains why Herman Mankiewicz was hired as the screenwriter and how he did most of his writing away from Hollywood with John Houseman because both he and Welles feared repression from William Randolph Hearst. Mankiewicz and Houseman's first script was called American and featured Kane as an unconsolidated collage of Hearst. After producing a second draft, Mankiewicz had to leave to work on a project at MGM and from this point onward no longer had a large impact on the development on the script. According to Carringer, at this point the script was still just a "string of discrete events lifted from a colorful biography"(25). When Welles took over the script, he revised over half of it creating the fully developed, alluring Kane from Mankiewicz's flat character. However, once Welles had to deal with budgetary issues, Mankiewicz returned to assist Welles in editing down the script albeit with a lesser creative influence. Carringer concludes this chapter with a discussion of the legal and political controversy surrounding the authorship of Citizen Kane between Welles and Mankiewicz.
     It seems that, despite his best efforts to take sole credit for the screenwriting of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles is very much indebted Herman Mankiewicz for the strength of Citizen Kane's narrative structure. In writing the first two drafts of the script, Mankiewicz provided the film with its prismatic narrative backbone, basic characters, and the bulk of the dialogue. Even his ideas for the beginning and final scenes remained relatively unchanged throughout the editing process. However, Citizen Kane would not have been remembered if it only had a solid script. At this juncture, it was Orson Welles who gave the film the ingenuity it needed to be remembered as a pioneering classic. Welles brought sophisticated humor and stylistic smoothness to the film through various sequences of montage. Most importantly, Welles brought his own personal genius to invigorate the character of Kane as infinitely and inconclusively multi-faceted man through the narrative structure and his acting.

McGinty, Sarah Myers. "Deconstructing Citizen Kane." The English Journal. (Jan 1987). JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia. 29 Nov. 2009.  .

    In Sarah Myers McGinty's article, she introduces Citizen Kane as a perfect text for explaining post-modern critical theories to high school students. McGinty explains that the film has a superficial, conventional meaning that most high school students will understand upon first viewing as well as a deeper, deconstructive meaning. McGinty shows that the central message of Citizen Kane is inherently deconstructionist as it is caught between two extremes: solving the mystery of Rosebud and a consistent destabilization of the viewer's search for Rosebud through each narrator's viewpoint. McGinty elucidates and analyses the views of Kane held by each of the film's five narrators but determines that each view "is mutually exclusive...[forcing] the viewer...to create his...own reading of the film's indeterminacies" (49). McGinty concludes her article with a short discussion of the use of language in the film.
    The film's narrative structure, according to McGinty, provides no solid core of truth but inherently deconstructs itself as it presents a story of a quest for knowledge and then ultimately refuses the viewer that knowledge. From the opening shot and second to last shot of the Citizen Kane, the film literally runs in circles. Looking at the "No Trespassing" sign on Xanadu's gates at both the beginning and ending of the film, the viewer must accept that Citizen Kane "deconstructs its own...explanations" and because of the plot structure of conflicting and fragmented narratives, meaning can and must be individually created by each of the film's viewers.

Carringer, Robert L. "Orson Welles and Gregg Toland: Their Collaboration on Citizen Kane." Critical Inquiry (Summer, 1982). JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia. 27 Nov. 2008. .

    In Carringer's article, he divides his main topics into three sections. In the first section, he illuminates the working relationship between Orson Welles and Gregg Toland explaining both of their personalities. Carringer also explains in this section the initial problems Orson Welles had with the script and getting the budget approved by RKO. However, despite RKO's lack of enthusiasm for the project and its budget, Carringer cites that Welles and Toland proceeded to shoot for three days what would be some of the most radical scenes of the film. In the article's second section, Carringer discusses Toland's photographic style and with examples of how he had developed it from previous films. Carringer also introduces the numerous advances in technology that were used in Citizen Kane, many of which were invented by Toland. In the final section of the article, Carringer explains how Citizen Kane was finished without Toland and how despite many nominations for Oscars; Citizen Kane received only one because Hollywood thought it was too experimental. Carringer concludes with a short synopsis of Toland's later projects and a description of how Citizen Kane did and didn't influence future films. 
     Before coming to film Citizen Kane, Gregg Toland had generated a visual style from his prior projects that rebelled against the conventions of Hollywood studio filmmaking. As evidence of this, Toland brought his own equipment to RKO to use in the filming of Citizen Kane because he had specially modified much of his equipment to better accomplish his style and because most major studios did not have his unique camera and lenses. Toland's style in Citizen Kane can be seen as a maturation of his previous work and according to Carringer consists of: "deep focus cinematography, long takes, the avoidance of conventional intercutting through such devices as multi-plane compositions and camera movement, elaborate camera choreography, lighting which produces a high contrast tonality, UFA style expressionism in certain scenes, low angle camera set ups, and an array of striking visual devices such as composite dissolves, extreme deep focus effects and shooting directly into lights" (658). Many of these techniques were not in common practice in Hollywood and were able to be successfully accomplished only because of recent technical advances and Toland's own ingenuity. Technological advances of the time consisted of: new, silent, stronger arc lamps, Eastman Kodak Super XX film stock, which was "four times faster than the previous Super X stock", a new technique of coating the camera lens with magnesium fluoride to improve light transmission, "new low grain stock for release prints", and the self blimped Mitchell BNC camera with a built in noise-dampening device (659-61). Toland's own inventions consisted of: muslin ceilings on sets to allow shooting and lighting from below, a waterhouse stop in place of a regular sliding aperture in the camera lens to remove the halo effect caused by shooting directly into a light source, a diminishing glass to produce the fish eye effect achieved in the shot of the nurse entering Kane's room upon his death, a four part in camera dissolve as a thematic transitional motif, and in camera mattes to achieve what appear to be incredible deep focus shots.

 

Carringer, Robert L. "Rosebud, Dead or Alive: Narrative and Symbolic Structure in Citizen Kane." PMLA (Mar. 1976). JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 29 Nov. 2008. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/461506>.

     In his article, Robert Carringer explores how Citizen Kane's modern narrative structure and film's symbolism are inextricably intertwined. Carringer argues against a simple psychological reading of Rosebud as representative of Kane's lost childhood. Carringer explains that the narrative structure of Citizen Kane is in keeping with a "predominant form of organization in modern narrative" in which there are multiple accounts of one subject, none of which are definitive or wholly reliable (185). He warns the viewer that if one were to see Rosebud in this light, one would undercut the entire reasoning behind Welles' multiple point of view narrative. Instead, Carringer urges the viewer to look at the film's symbolic sequences to find elucidations of the conflicting narrative and the film's overarching message.
      According to Carringer, the snow globe that first appears next to Kane's deathbed is Citizen Kane's central symbol and not Rosebud. More representative of Kane than Rosebud the sled, the snow globe represents the whole Kane, which upon his death shatters into the multifaceted opinions of those who loved and hated him. The shattering of the snow globe becomes symbolic of both Thompson and the viewer's quest in the film: to determine if Kane can ever be understood entirely by examining each of the fragments of his life. In this light, the entire film is encompassed in the symbolic meaning of the snow globe. Yet, the symbol of Rosebud also serves an equally important narrative purpose. In one light, Rosebud serves as the oil that greases the wheels of the plot between each narrator's flashback and "a mechanism for...exploring attitudes and points of view" (192). Rosebud as the burning sled on the other hand serves as a anti-conclusion to the film and forces the viewer to see the importance of the film's narrative structure in the search for meaning in Citizen Kane. Rosebud serves as a "red herring" whose hidden identity fuels the plot. Each exploration of Rosebud serves to elucidate the symbol, which provides a semi-conclusive answer on the identity of Kane, the snow globe, and at the same time to "develop a more fundamental meaning...that there are parts of Kane that are knowable and others that will always remain beyond our interpretation" (192).

Leff, Leonard J. "Reading Kane." Film Quarterly (Autumn, 1985). JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia. 27 Dec. 2008. <http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:2097/stable/1212276?&Search=yes&term=citizen&term=welles&term=orson&term=kane&term=toland&term=gregg&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoAdvancedSearch%3Fq0%3Dcitizen%2Bkane;f0%3Dall;c0%3DAND;q1%3Dorson%2Bwelles;f1%3Dall;c1%3DOR;q2%3Dgregg%2Btoland%2B;f2%3Dall;c2%3DAND;q3%3D;f3%3Dall;wc%3Don;Search%3DSearch;sd%3D;ed%3D;la%3D;jo%3D&item=10&ttl=571&returnArticleService=showArticle>.

    In Leff’s article “Reading Kane,” he explores the past explanations of the relationship between the cinematography and narrative structure in Citizen Kane. Leff also provides the reader with a method in which a viewer can use his reaction to Citizen Kane to establish an understanding of the film even while suffering through Citizen Kane’s “unfulfilled assumptions” and thwarted clear-cut conclusions (20). Leff chooses Thatcher’s flashback his main example and successfully applies his method in great detail. Leff concludes with a discussion of the unsatisfying, anti-climatic, and intellectual roller coaster like qualities of the film's final sequence and how these feelings established in the final shots are even carried over into the credits and its soundtrack.
    Leff suggests in his article that like Thompson in his navigation of life after Kane, the viewer must also take an active role in the creation of meaning in Citizen Kane due to its frustratingly fragmented and contradictory narrative. Leff proposes that the viewer can find meaning by carefully analyzing each shift in point of view in the narrative and by using those points of inconsistency to establish his own understanding. This way of approaching the film seems highly appropriate if one accepts Leff’s interpretation of the one conclusion provided in the film. In the last sequence of the film, the viewer does learn what “Rosebud” is and gains what Leff describes as “a long delayed pleasure that [the viewer] assumed, especially given the film’s lack of convention, would be denied…” (19). And yet, this sense of closure is utterly false and leaves the viewer no closer to truly understanding Kane than at the beginning of the film. Thus, according to Leff, Welles’ chosen ending seems to imply that the viewer should not automatically accept the film’s supplied connections and conclusions as the ultimate understanding of the film, but should try to create meaning through a method such as Leff’s.

Mulvey, Laura. Citizen Kane. London: BFI Publishing, 1992. 9-77.

    In Laura Mulvey’s book Citizen Kane, she adds a European perspective to the film by analyzing it based upon the momentous time in history during which it was made. Mulvey views Citizen Kane as a warning to America of the likelihood of an unfavorable outcome should America continue its isolationist policies into World War II. Mulvey includes her own personal critique on the themes, symbolism and both the visual and narrative style of the film. In addition, Mulvey adds a thorough analysis of the narrative from both a Freudian psychoanalytic and feminist point of view.  Mulvey explores the politics surrounding the making of Citizen Kane including a discussion of the film’s authorship and William Randolph Hearst’s crusade against the film. Mulvey’s short book is not divided into sections or chapters as she eloquently weaves each of these elements of analysis fluidly into her writing. Because of Mulvey’s lack of clearly defined divisions of topic in her book, I have chosen to cite her entire work while only discussing specific points which are relevant to my thesis despite their being spread throughout her book.
     Mulvey discusses the narrative structure of Citizen Kane in great depth describing it as "prismatic," focusing on symbolism, repetition and symmetry to create stability and fluidity. The narrative is structured through five sections of flashbacks, each told from a different character’s point of view, all encompassed by a frame story. The frame story features a reporter, Thompson, who is attempting to put together the pieces of Kane’s private life after his death and does this for the audience and himself through each character's memories of Kane. These flashbacks, while having their own overlaps and discontinuities, comprise the majority of the film. Mulvey points out that each flashback is highly variable and contradictory in its portrayal of Kane and enhances the fragmentation of the narrative. Thus, despite the bulk of information they provide, the characters in Citizen Kane do not give a reliable means of understanding Kane to the viewer. What Mulvey points out that the characters’ inconsistencies make it so that no one view of Kane can be relied on as definitive. Yet, Mulvey believes that because it is our popular cultural tradition, the viewer cannot help but try to judge Kane as either clearly the hero or villain of the story. However, the film’s narrative structure ensures that this goal is consistently thwarted, something not generally done in a classical Hollywood film.

Arnold, Gary. "'Best Years' shows best of Toland; Cinematographer known for deep focus." The Washington Times. Final Edition (21 May 2004). Lexis Nexis Academic. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia. 27 Nov. 2008. .

    Arnold's article outlines Gregg Toland's Hollywood career, which comprised most of his life, on the anniversary of his centennial, specifically pointing out the projects in which Toland’s developed style is most visible. Also, Arnold describes Toland’s rise through the Hollywood ranks from a mere office boy to a renowned cinematographer and explains the deep focus style that Toland is so famous for mastering.

Even before his work on Citizen Kane, Gregg Toland had spent nine years as a cinematographer, building up his own experience, crew and cache of equipment that he knew he could best use to achieve his deep focus style. Toland’s deep focus style kept everything in the shot in sharp focus with actors balanced geometrically but able to move throughout the planes. In the shooting of Citizen Kane, Toland used new technology in creative ways and reinvented established technology for his distinct purposes. The customized equipment Toland used in the shooting of Citizen Kane consisted of a Mitchell BNC camera, Eastman Kodak Super XX stock, and a 24mm wide-angle lens. Toland chose the Mitchell BNC camera because it was more lightweight than most cameras used during the 1930’s, allowing him a greater freedom of movement in his shots. The 24mm wide-angle lens Toland used he had restructured for aperture reductions which enabled him to carefully customize the f-stop. Finally, Toland used broadside arcs, invented to increase the light available for color exposure, for a different purpose: to sharpen the focus in the furthest and darkest planes of his black and white shots in Citizen Kane.

 

Harpole, Charles H. " Ideological and Technological Determinism in Deep Space Cinema Images: Issues in Ideology, Technological History and Aesthetics."Film Quarterly (Spring, 1980). JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia. 27 Nov. 2008. .
      In this article, Charles Harpole outlines two conflicting critical views of the purpose of deep focus cinematography, which arose after 1940. He explains that according to the Bazinian theory, deep space illusions are created in films to provide realism to images and are technologically important because they require so much in the way of devices to produce them successfully. He describes Comolli’s opposing materialist viewpoint as such: deep space effects are important in film because they “indicate the extent to which an ideological way of representation is embedded in a mass medium.” Harpole elaborates that while other critics have described a lack of deep focus cinematography between 1925 and 1940 due to the limitations caused by sound technology, panochromatic film stock and the increase in narrative focus, he believes that deep space cinema composition has always been present, just in varied forms. He outlines stages of the development of deep focus cinematography. Harpole states that between 1895 and 1914, films lacked zoning and artificial lighting, and that many films focused on much “exterior shooting, high detail, and hard focus” to create a great depth of field. In the second time period, from 1914-1919, Harpole recognizes a “deployment of depth of space in simultaneous interior and exterior spaces, in extensive and complex linear perspective and in narratively important to and fro movement of people through spaces.” From 1919-1929 films focused on refining the mise en scene and used some zoned lighting, back and forth movement, and a mixture of shots, which greatly varied in their depth of field and focus. Between 1929-1940, cinematographers made use of complex lighting zones and began to have multiple planes of interaction within the space of a single frame. This period also witnessed greater camera movement, which explored and revealed increasing depth of space. Thus, Harpole concludes that Citizen Kane was not revolutionary in its style, but rather was the result of a long evolution of deep space cinematography beginning in the late 1800’s.
     Harpole explores two different subjects in his article both of which are highly relevant to my thesis: the effect of depth of space cinematography on the filmic images and Gregg Toland’s past cinematographic experience. Harpole explains that the wide-angle lens used to convey depth of space causes images to appear stretched, which places an emphasis on proportional and linear perspective, which is sometimes used to create juxtaposition and irony within a frame. However, when the wide-angle lens is used with uniform focus, emphasis is removed from any one single figure and the viewer is subconsciously instructed view the mise en scene as a single important image. Citizen Kane utilizes both types of shots for those purposes. Secondly, according to Harpole, Toland worked on many films that explored shots with great depth of field between 1929 and 1941, the period of time in which most critics believe there to be an absence of depth in cinematograhy. Harpole recognizes Toland’s shooting in Bulldog Drummond, to shows the beginnings of the progression towards the refinement of deep focus images in Citizen Kane. Harpole cites that Toland worked on twelve films during this time all of which he considers stylistic forerunners of Citizen Kane. Thus, it seems that the deep focus style of Citizen Kane was gradually explored and developed by Toland throughout his prior projects.

Orson Welles' Citizen Kane is well known as one of the most innovative films of the century. In this annotated bibliography, I wish to research two of the most lauded aspects of the film: the unique narrative structure and cinematographic style. Specifically, I will explore the type of narrative structure Citizen Kane implements and how this adds to the film's overall style. Also, I will investigate how Citizen Kane's cinematographer, Gregg Toland, employed creative uses of technology to develop the visual style in Citizen Kane. Finally, I want to discover in what ways Toland and Welles brought their past personal experiences into the making of Citizen Kane.

 

Salt, Barry. "Film Style and Technology in the Forties."Film Quarterly Vol. 31, No. 1 (Autumn, 1977). JSTOR. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia, 27 Nov. 2008. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1211826>.

 

I am still working on this project, so I will post a thesis soon.