Current Forum: Session 2: Film Language in Classical Hollywood Cinema	Read 19 times 	
Date: 21-Jan-2001 18:55:25	
Author: SIMMONS, JOHN A. <jas7625@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>	
Subject: Life through a Looking Glass 	
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        I would like to discuss what I consider to be Orson Welles’ most pervasive and repeated stylistic device: fragmentation. The film, Citizen Kane, is basically a story about a man who fits into the ideological categories of white, male, upper class, and heterosexual. However, those categories do not provide an experience of “who” the man is. Rather, what the audience is presented with is just a montage of fragmented slices of an individual’s identity. One of the questions that is then asked by the film is not in regards to race or gender, but instead what is required to “know” someone. The film’s overall structure is one of flashbacks, or more appropriately fragments of a man’s life as filtered through the imagination and remembrance of others. Why did Wells decide to use flashbacks instead of simply telling the story in linear 
fragmented progression? The answer that seems to jump forward is the importance of, as Lippman states, the interrelationship between the “knower and the known.” C.F. Kane is only presented to the audience through the mediation of another’s mind. Let me provide specific scenes to illustrate my point. The film opens with an extreme close-up on C.F. Kane’s mouth whispering the word “rosebud.” Immediately following this shot is another extreme close-up of the glass globe shattering on the hard floor by his bed. The scene is ended with a type of P.O.V. shot.  The interesting thing is that it is from the P.O.V. of one of the shards of glass. What can be excised from this scene? Notice that the introduction to Kane, and the only actual shot of him 
outside flashbacks, is one of fragmented distortion. The viewer is introduced to Kane in an almost surreal way. Secondly, the shot through the glass provides not only a momentary glimpse but also a type of psychological framing that will last throughout the film. The lens distorts the bedroom; likewise the rest of the film will be distorted by mediation and memory. Here at the introduction, all we meet is a confusing mixture of images, not an individual. The scene of the political rally is also a very telling scene involving fragmentation. The introductory high-angle shot looking down on Kane behind the podium traditionally would suggest a weak man, but the shot immediately changes to a low-angle shot with Kane dwarfed by the gigantic 
picture of himself. Following the defeat of Kane in the election, he is shown surrounded by papers and ruins of his campaign but the camera is set at almost a reverse God’s eye view shot. Kane appears triumphant even in defeat. These three examples of the ironic use of traditional framing suggest much more than clever direction; they beg the question of who Kane is. Is he the triumphant politician? The image behind the man? Nothing but hype? A frustrated lonely individual? The answer to these questions is the most telling thing about Kane himself: there is no “correct” answer. By extension then, is there no “correct” understanding of Kane? 
       Let us turn now to a comparison of two other scenes. Firstly, the scene at the beginning of the film when the banker visits Kane’s parents and we are presented with a deep focus shot of two different things: i.e., who Kane is (the boy in the background) and who he is (the man being created by the paperwork in the foreground). Notice that I use the term “is” intentionally twice here as to question the actuality of Kane being more “genuine” in childhood. Secondly, the scene of Kane in Xanadu after his wife has left and he stands in front of a hall of mirrors. Here we see another deep focus. Again the question is:  Is Kane the man in front of the mirror or is he 
merely a simulacrum of himself? Finally there is the final shot of the film:  a sled with the word “rosebud” on it burning in a fireplace. Here the final truth is discovered but notice the irony of it. The truth will only exist a moment longer before vanishing into ash; thereby fragmenting into millions of undecipherable pieces of its former accuracy. Let me also suggest that the knowledge of the definition of rosebud provides nothing but another fragment of Kane and yields no real information as to who he was. Therefore, the use of fragmentation throughout this film serves to question the very fragmented categories that this class pieces together regarding identity. 
       I no longer am Aaron, now I am white-male-middleclass-heterosexual-Aaron. In our attempt to be accepting of, as Minh-ha would say, the “outsider” and provide legitimization for alternate “identities” we have broken those very identities into nothing but fragments of the individual who disappears in ash, burned by the fire of current political trends of multicultural awareness.  "Citizen Kane" asks much more than who is C.F. Kane; it also forces us to ask who am I? The scary thing is when we can only answer the question by asking someone else, or by taking a class in college. Maybe all we can see is ourselves through a piece of damp broken glass lying on the floor at the foot of the bed supporting our dead individuality?