Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Citizen Kane Wouldn't Have Been as Good Had it Been Released Today

I've waited until the end of the film to post this blog, and then some unfortunately, so i hope the idea is still original. The era in film which Citizen Kane was released was ideal for one very simple reason: the movie was in black and white. Certainly unintended by the producers since color was a method more tried than true at the time, B&W is part of what makes the movie so great. One of the things we've always noted in class is how critical the camera angles are or how the lighting plays into the stories'  undertone. In photography, the artist takes into account where a viewers eye is draw within the image frame. (Or stupid french word Mr. Bennet uses) this can be done using other objects in the foreground or by using shadow and light. The movie Citizen Kane uses light to frame its subjects very often and it is here that the movie is only as good as it is in B&W. Had it been shot in color, the viewers eye may  have been drawn to something more striking somewhere else in the frame, or worse, nowhere specific at all. Shooting B&W makes it much easier to dictate what the human eye focuses on in the frame since all colors are rendered neutral. Citizen Kane owes much of its lasting appeal to thought put into each camera angle and my verdict is that each camera angle was only as great as it was because it wasn't shot in color. You could argue that such a film would still be a hit today because of a good story-line or something else like that. Maybe but i would hesitate to say so because shooting it exactly the same way would still lack what i just talked about and a black and white film today needs to be actiony to make money. Movie fanatics probably cringe at that thought, but movies aren't about the viewer anymore, only the viewer's money