Citizen Kane is often referred to as the
greatest film of all time
and Orson Welles is often referred to as the
greatest film director of all time but
it's rarely discussed exactly why that
is and exactly what this has to say
about the unique position that film was
in in the early 1940s.
you see, the thing is,
and I'm going to massively butcher
this explanation so please do some
further reading, there were two schools
of thought at this period in history
about what made film unique as an art
form. Look at where video games are today
constantly a risk of censorship not
truly considered art by a large number
of the population. The question that
probably comes up the most is if video
games are art what can they do that other
art forms, from plays to paintings to
movies, can't do? being able to answer
what makes this a unique form of
artistic expression legitimizes the art
form in question and back in the 30s and
40s movies were facing a lot of the same
criticisms that videogames are today.
One of the most prominent answers to this
was the Russian answer which is film is
about editing. In a play everything that
happens happens there and then in that
moment you can't edit a play. People
can't jump from one side of the stage to
the other. You can't create meaning
through the juxtaposition of two images
across space-time the same way that you
can with film. This was known as Russian
montage Theory: the juxtaposition of
images to create meaning.
Whilst Eisenstein is probably the most famous
theorist
in this particular school of thought the
Kuleshov effect is probably the best
example of what they were talking about.
You show a person's face, you show
something else. It could be a dead body
it could be a bowl of soup it could be
an attractive lady then you cut back to
the person with exactly the same facial
expression and people will read
different emotions, say sadness
or hunger or lust, just based on the
Assembly of those images. The other
school of thought however was the French
school of thought mostly led by Andre Bazin.
What they believe made film unique
was films ability to accurately capture
a moment. This idea is intrinsically
antithetical to the Russian school of thought.
According to film scholar Ian
Christie in the bfi's French cinema book
Andre Bazin thought the Soviet montage
school should be considered a deviation
from cinemas intrinsically realist
mission. Instead films should play out in
long takes be staged in depth editing as
little as possible so as to preserve the
truth of the moment recorded. So surely
there's no way of reconciling these two
approaches into one unified filmmaking
style?
Well that is where Orson Welles
and Citizen Kane come in. Citizen Kane
was a film that married these two
approaches perfectly. if you were from
the French school you could point to a
scene like the one where his mother
essentially signs him away and say look
there's basically two cuts in this
entire scene, everything staged in depth
and it's true to the moment that was
happening then. If you believe the
Russian school however you could point
to the moments that directly follow it:
the snow piling up on top of the sled,
fading in more and more snow to imply
the passage of time. The cutting from
Merry Christmas to another moment years
and years later joining the two
thematically.
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year
that's very Russian.
And the marriage of
these two ideas is something that can be
traced across the entirety of Orson
Welles career. Look at this scene from
Touch of Evil for example this plays out
largely in this one-take but the one
moment that it does cut near the end it
cuts straight after this line
"Shall we... Drink to that?"
"I don't..."
"Two more double Bourbons..."
"...make em nice and big."
This implies an
internal shift within the character,
one that's fundamentally also expressed by
the new angle itself neither of these
shots would have as much impact without
the other, but similarly they are holding
for such a long time, letting us bask in
the truth of this particular moment.
It's a perfect marriage of holding long takes
like classic French cinema and cutting
to imply meaning like Russian cinema.
That is why Orson Welles is so beloved
of film critics and filmmakers. This is
the thing that he did differently,
that really set him apart from everyone else.
thank you very much for watching this video!
I hope you enjoyed it. If you did
please do click the subscribe and the
little Bell notification thing. I'm sorry
about the sudden change in energy levels
for this outro because I've gained a
cold since recording this video yay
there's a bunch of other things in this
video that I really want to make full
videos on at some point like Russian
montage theory and the Hays Code which
is bonkers and needs its own video. So if
you want to see any of those please do
let me know in the comments down below
