Auteurist analysis of Orson Welles

Auteurist analysis of Orson Welles’s "Citizen Kane" by J.D. Santo

Citizen Kane (US, Orson Welles, 1941, 119’), although Welles’s first feature film, laid the ground for themes, techniques, and stylistic tendencies that would appear later in his career in more distinctively film noir works such as Touch of Evil and Lady from Shanghai. According to Andrew Sarris’s auteur theory, which is the most practical (in that we are not so much interested in change over time as Peter Wollen’s auteur theory is, but can instead begin to link similar themes, techniques, and stylistic tendencies by viewing just a few of the director’s works), a director’s worth as an auteur can be displayed through his technical competence, recurrent style, and interior meaning. (Here, I take recurring themes throughout Welles’s oeuvre to reflect his interior meaning). Welles’s “overfondness for the baroque,” as André Bazin so succinctly described it, along with deep focus/deep space compositions, elaborate choreography, and high-contrast lighting in Citizen Kane all compliment Welles’s examination of corruption, isolation, and the downfall of a powerful man. These themes and technical aspects are no doubt shared throughout Welles’s body of work, which leave a distinct “signature” on all of his films, thus making Citizen Kane a most important piece in Welles’s overall oeuvre as an auteur.

Welles’s “overfondness for the baroque” and exotic visuals permeates through all of his films, Citizen Kane firstly and therefore most importantly. The most obvious example in this sense is Kane’s extravagant mansion, Xanadu. Packed with statues, artwork, and lavish furniture, Xanadu’s elaborate mise-en-scéne provides a contrast to Welles’s recurring theme of isolation. (Because the theme of isolation is so closely related to the theme of downfall, I will use the two nearly interchangeably). Kane’s attempt to buy affection, particularly that of his second wife, Susan Kane, ends up driving those closest to him further away. Kane insists that the couple has everything they could ever need or want in their palace; Susan, however, is most dissatisfied with her situation (“49,000 acres of nothing but scenery and statues,” as she describes it) and causes Kane to descend into the most reclusive depths of isolation by leaving him. Kane is now a man who has everything in the world and yet nothing of value, isolated in the very palace that he believed would win him much affection and praise. Welles’s extravagance of mise-en-scéne, along with his fondness for sensational stories, is also contrasted with the realism that is provided through Welles’s use of long takes and deep focus.

Welles displays his tendency to use deep focus/deep space composition to compliment his themes in one scene early on in Citizen Kane, notable in the fact that we can learn just as much from the images on the screen as we can from the dialogue. As Mary Kane and Kane’s father are inside their home signing the document to turn their son, Charles Foster Kane, over to Walter Thatcher, young Charles is playing outside in the snow. In the foreground to the right of the window is Mary Kane, in the midground to the right of the window is Walter Thatcher, in the background to the left of the window is Kane’s father, and in the extreme background through the window we can see Charles, in complete focus, playing in the snow. This feat (presenting the entire frame in sharp focus) is not easily achieved, as it requires not just the technical competence of a good director but the technical mastery of a great one; deep focus is achieved only through the perfect amount of lighting. The choreography and placement of the actors in the scene is key, reinforcing the fact that Charles is literally “coming between” between the adult characters while also reflecting the coldness of the Kanes’ marriage and displaying Charles’s isolation by his parents.

Welles uses low-key, high-contrast lighting and chiaroscuro to compliment his diegesis as well. The chiaroscuro provides a contrast, as Welles often uses, between the moral and the immoral, the right and the wrong, the “clean” and the “dirty.” Borrowing a technique from German Expressionist films, Welles tends to use lighting and shadows that distorts or hides the faces of the immoral or “dirty.” When the morality of a character in Welles’s film is ambiguous, as it so often is, the lighting in the scene often depends on its context. For example, there is a scene just after Susan Kane’s regrettable performance in the opera house where Kane is completing a drunken Jedediah’s scathing review of Susan’s amateurish singing. Kane is in the foreground, shadows on his face, partially outside of the frame, while Jedediah is completely within the frame, well-lit. Welles viewed Jedediah’s honesty and subjective opinion in his review of Susan’s performance as noble attributes, even though Jedediah likely knew the consequences of his candor.

Welles would continue to use low-key lighting, deep focus/deep space compositions, choreography and extravagant mise-en-scéne to accentuate his most-favored themes of isolation, corruption, and the downfall of a powerful figure in his subsequent films, particularly in Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil. Welles is most successful as an auteur in that he manages to rather loosely connect all of his films with one another not just through film technique but also through several recurring themes, displaying a marvelous technical competence along the way. It is most difficult to precisely define an auteur, but perhaps Sarris’s most simplified theory, which adheres most faithfully to François Truffaut’s original vision of the theory, is correct. Truffaut’s “politique des auteurs,” the basis of auteur theory, contends that a true auteur’s work must display consistencies in themes and style, leaving a distinct “signature” on each of his/her films. Welles most certainly leaves his signature on his films, filling them with the sensational, the extravagant, the powerful, and the corrupt using film technique that is inarguably his own.