![]() ![]() The unsettling, almost unnatural stillness of the final scene they appear in together, set amongst an elegant dining setting, appears more as a staged theatre scene than a cozy domestic meal. ![]() The tone of their voices become hardened towards each other, and the amount of words they exchange on a daily basis dwindles. Their emotional separation is made apparent by the increasingly terse and stilted dialogue the once happy couple share. His lonely death shows the sad turn that his life has clearly taken, however, the loss of other personal relationships are traced throughout Kane.Īlthough Kane and his first wife Emily’s relationship is initially depicted as being quite loving and tender, the scenes that follow their blissful courtship demonstrate the loss of such feelings. The theme of loss within Citizen Kane is also shown through his loss of personal relationships, in exchange for what he is taught to perceive as success. This is suggested by his gasping of “Rosebud” (referring to his much loved sleigh, and essentially, his much missed childhood) at the films beginning. Kane forever onwards appears to harbour a longing for the ‘frozen’ memory of his lost, though most likely idealised childhood. Although Thatcher later gives Kane another sleigh, it is too late Kane’s defiant rejection of the sleigh demonstrates the way in which it is not so much the sleigh, but his previous childhood happiness that he longs for. Kane is never again shown against a pure white background, suggesting that his childhood (and implicitly his innocence) was wrested from his in this instant, left behind him with his sleigh, all for the sake of trying to guarantee that Kane’s future is a ‘successful’ one. Snow in itself bears “connotations both of burying and freezing ” (3). Having unwillingly left his simplistic home for the riches and supposedly assured success Thatcher can offer him, the sleigh is all that remains, shown abandoned in the foreground, covered in snow. During this scene, a close up of Kane’s indignant expression fades out slowly to reveal the sleigh he happily played with moments before. Kane appears visually trapped within the frames of a window, echoing the way in which he is being ‘trapped’ into Mr. Kane is shown in the background of the scene, while in the foreground, his parents and Mr. The first flashback scene shown (set at Kane’s childhood home) begins Kane on this aforementioned negative emotional journey. As a faceless reporter goes about collecting personal recounts of Kane, the stories told suggest that throughout the majority of his life, Kane was “moving inevitably toward bitterness, disappointment and loss” (2). The iconic Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941), a biopic that traces the life of fictional newspaper magnate Charles Kane, uses the elements of mise-en-scene to reinforce ‘loss’ as a recurring theme throughout the film. The term ‘mise-en-scene’ is used to “signify the director’s control over what appears in the film frame” (1) and covers such elements as setting, lighting, costume and the movement and actions of figures appearing within the film. ![]()
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