Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

For example, in the scene above (fig. 57), as Charles Foster Kane screams after Boss J.W.
“Big Jim” Gettys (Ray Collins), various elements interrelate. As Gettys descends the stairs,
the camera pans up to bad-tempered Kane who is leaning forward over the guard rail, his
figure looking smaller and awry, compared to the upright figure of Gettys as he comes
down the stairs. The staircase, moreover, has a meaning well beyond its function in which
this particular scene plays out. It serves as a point of intersection between the two figures,
but simultaneously as an obstacle. Still visually, we see the two antagonistic characters
inside the same deep plane of focus thanks to the camera angles and mise-en-scène, and
symbolically, a staircase 70 with the guardrail and banister posts holding Kane back from
any possible action.
In conclusion, it is at the visual / stylistic level, I believe, that Citizen Kane achieves
its place at the noir canon. The unconstrained camerawork by Toland in such scenes, or in
the famous library sequence, remains an extraordinary example of film Expressionism. The
scenes below also show some good example of the panoply of optical effects that future
films benefited from. The manifestly obvious choice of trompe-l’oeil actually increases the
sinister atmosphere of the house (fig. 58), while the amazing optical trick used in fig. 59
not only enhances the immense proportions of interior sets (in this case the interiors of
Xanadu, but also those of Thatcher’s library or Bernstein’s office), it also emphasises the
enormous intrigue that encloses the whole feature. Most scenes are actually filmed one
frame within another, with reflections all over the place, and the use of deep focus
technique, as both figures below show. In fact, the finale of the film is emblematic of this
technique: the use of framing Charles Foster Kane inside a frame closes him off from
anybody else around him. The symbolism behind the framed images of Kane, while he
walks through the corridor past some framed mirrors, constitute an intriguingly structured
manner of retelling the memories of a man, and his final words gain additional meaning, as
if he is trapped within himself and the captivity of his affluence. Welles used here an
optical printer, i.e., a film projector mechanically coupled to a camera, enabling the
director achieve the enormous close-up of Kane’s lips murmuring “Rosebud”. With the aid
of the optical printer, the film manages to create these extraordinary visual transitions, and
in Welles’s hands they certainly acquire a unique versatility.
70 The symbol of staircases and mirrors will be further explored in Part IV.
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