Citizen Kane Blog

In the film Citizen kane a prominent aspect of film I noticed was mise-en-scene. One of the aspects of mise-en-scene I saw was the influence of costume. The clothes the people wore seemed authentic for the time period. I think the creators of the film did this to reinforce the time period to which the movie was set, and the social class the characters were in. The costumes I saw were generally fancy. I saw a lot of suits and dresses. Kane was pretty much wearing a suit of some form throughout the whole movie. One of the more stylized costumes I noticed were in the beginning when Kane hired dancers to celebrate the new coming reporters to the Inquirer, and when Susan was singing in the opera. The costumes there were very flashy, and showed off the body.
Another piece I noticed was the setting. I found it very interesting that in some of the scenes that would have required an enormous set, were really paintings. Examples of this were the shots of Kane's house, and his big election speech. I believe this was done to conserve time and money. If they would have built a whole house set, or filled a huge room full of extras it would have taken months more and probably thousands of extra dollars on the film. The set of the film probably accurately depicted the time period. Everything seemed to be old fashioned, and fit in well with the happenings in the film. Nothing in the film seemed overly modern, but then again I'm not overly sure of what the time period of the film is. I wouldn't say that I overly enjoyed the film, but it was a good choice to depict the aspects of film that we recently learned about.