Citizen Kane: Blog Post

Frank Saltiel

            The lighting in Citizen Kane was done exceptionally well.  One lighting fixture that stayed the same throughout the movie which I thought was interesting was how there was always a shadow on the reporter.  There was always more light and therefore more focus on the person that he would be talking to.  I think the significance is to show how the only reason why the reporter is talking to the person is to get information about a word Kane said, and doesn’t actually care about Charles Kane.  He is doing it for his job and he is talking to people who actually had a strong personal connection with Kane and the lighting puts more emphasis on the personal connections.  Another scene where I think the lighting was done well was the scene where Susan is sitting in front of the fireplace making a puzzle and Kane is sitting in a chair in the distance.  The lighting is mostly focused on Susan leaving little light for Kane.  I think this shows how Susan wants to get out of the mansion and do something.  She is considerably younger than Kane and wants to be young and do things.  Kane is different.  He wants to stay there in the mansion and tells Susan “this is our home” when Susan asks to go to New York.  There is more darkness on Kane in this scene to show his old age ambition to not go anywhere but his mansion.  I think one scene where the lighting was off (in my opinion) was when the reporter went to the huge chamber to look through some book.  The camera still made the reporter look dark but I think he should’ve had light shown on him because he was the only character on the screen for the moment.  At the time I was watching it I couldn’t understand why he was so dark and everything else had more lighting than him.  As I pointed to earlier the lighting really emphasizes the concept of what the two persons aims were.  The reporter and the person being interviewed.  The lighting puts more emphasis on the person being interviewed in order to stress their personal connection with Kane.  Another movie where lighting is used very well is any of the three batman movies.  The director always shows batman in darkness, shadows, or just any dark scene.  He does this to emphasize batman’s covert mysterious personality.  He is shown in faint lighting not because he is to be portrayed as evil or the bad guy, but merely because he is a superhero who likes to be low key and unseen.