Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane Opening 

The first scene we look at is a close of a sign, a sign in which says ‘no trespassing’; we see this sign on a fence. However, we cannot see what is behind the fence as it is blurred out. This would create an enigma for the audience watching as they would want to know what is behind the fence and would leave them eager to wanting to know what lies behind the fence. We then see that the genre of this film could possibly be a thriller which has been given out through the use of enigma codes. We then fade into another scene where we see the environment where there is a castle like building where something may take place. The environment we see it as to be a very spooky, eerie place surrounded by fog.  This builds up tension as we don’t know what this place is and for more obvious reasons it looks scary.

Along with that spooky music that is also being played which we can easily tell that its parallel music which matches the scenery. This could connote that something bad or maybe upsetting is going to take place. We also notice that all the scenes that have been shown the transaction of the scenes have all been fades. Which could get the audience scared, as they don’t know what could pop put next. Suddenly as we fade into a window the music starts building up heavier, the lights go off. This could potentially foreshadow someone’s lights being turned out, which significantly means that someone might die. We then find our selves looking up on an extreme close ups which shows the director wanted us to pay attention to what will happen, what happens is the man says a word in which he says faintly. From this we can connote that he is a very weak man physically from the way he speaks.

We then are in a medium shot of a house in where it is snowing outside. However here our eyes deceive as the camera zooms out from the house we begin to realise its just a snowball in someone’s hands. However from this we can tell that it is winder time from what conventions were displayed from the snow globe like the snow. Suddenly we see that the old man let goes of the snow globe, we then see the globe rolling away and smashes on to the ground into pieces. Then after we see a maid enters the room in which we understand that this man was a very important person in which was powerful and maybe well known. We see the maid then covers the old man with a white sheet. This white sheet connotes to us that the man has in fact died. We can now confirm that the reason to why at the begging the director has used the fades is because he’s trying to show that this man here is fading away. Finally in the end of the begging of the scene we have the man covered and the scene fades out.