Lighting, depth of field, and focus in Citizen Kane

Orson Welles' Citizen Kane is widely regarded as the best film of all time, mostly due to his integration of all the aspects of film-making into the movie. Most important of these, however, are lighting and Welles' use of the deep-focus and telephoto lenses.

Lighting contributes a lot to the "feel" of Citizen Kane. The main characters, Kane and the reporter guy trying to find out what Rosebud is, are both often in shadow, giving us the sense that they are not the standard, virtuous heroes. Maybe they have altruistic motives.

Welles uses the telephoto lens in several key scenes. When Kane is signing away the majority of his newspaper empire, he walks to the window. The windows do not seem too large at first, but as he walks to them he seems to be dwarfed by them once next to them. The same effect is given in the fireplace scene with Susan Alexander.

The deep focus lens is used to great effect in the scene in which Kane's mother gives him to Thatcher to look over. He is playing happily in the background and we can see him through the window while his parents and Thatcher are in the foreground. Normally Kane would be very blurry due to being in the background, but Welles wants us to pay some attention to him despite him being in the background, as the background is equally important as the foreground in that scene.