Citizen Kane: Point of View
In addition to offering innovations in cinematography, sound, editing, sequence and pacing, Orson Welles' landmark film Citizen Cane (1941) offers an innovative narrative strategy whereby the movie's plot and back-story are advanced through varying points of view. Altogether, there are six "sub-narrators" or co-narrators of the film. Each of the six narrators offers a partial picture of the film's central character: Charles Foster Kane. By using six different narrators to reflect as many perspectives on his protagonist, Welles accomplished, in cinema, a narrative technique previously known only literary fiction.
By adopting a half-dozen narrators, Welles is able to utilize each of the individual narrators as a more or less reliable narrator, leaving "gaps" in the story to exert a more deeply compelling and interactive experience for the audience. This technique is built upon by Welles, or embellished by Welles, through the use of cinematography and pacing throughout the film. The fact that the audience can never be certain which of the six various narrators offers the more "true" picture of Charles Foster Kane is crucial to the aesthetic and thematic impulse behind some of Welles' most famous shots and scenes in the film.
Obviously, the most reliable of the six narrators is, by necessity, the "newsreel obituary." This narrator is reliable to the extent that the audience understands that the facts and ideas forwarded by the newsreel are not motivated by personal or emotional impulses. There is a natural tendency on behalf of audiences to instinctively grant the newsreel narrator more "objectivity" simply due to its journalistic detachment. Welles exploits this instinctive "suspension of disbelief" by using the newsreel footage to grant the audience only a broad-overview of the significant events of Kane's existence.
The surface-level survey evades any emotional coloring or shading of personality, therefore, the audience expects that this missing substance will be provided by one of the five other narrators. Welles' strategy is to craft a narrative so tight that no single narrator grants a complete picture of Kane and even when all six narrators are considered together, the overall image remains somewhat incomplete. The point of this is to enhance suspense and mystery and to comment on the nature of interpersonal relationships: "The technique of telling the story of Kane from multiple points of view dispels the illusion that we are learning the "truth" about Charles Foster Kane. As numerous commentators have observed, the film is like a complicated jigsaw puzzle which the viewer must piece together, bit by bit, in order to see the whole picture" (Fabe 83). This piecing together on behalf of the audience brings about a level of audience-engagement that allows each member of the audience, in effect, to become a "witness" to Kane's life and death. The audience is the ultimate judge of Kane's nature and ultimate moral or immoral soundness.
Just as the newsreel narrator provides only a "topical" representation of Kane, each of the other narrators brings a partial piece of the puzzle to the table. Raymond, Kane's Butler, appears to be motivated by both greed and his gossipy nature; Susan, Kane's second wife, seems slightly bitter but genuinely concerned about Kane, while Thatcher seems let down, and Bernstein remains loyal. Jed Leland occupies a special relationship to Kane in that he is both a friend of Kane's and someone who has "seen through" Kane's seductive personality. Each narrator (including the one in the News on the March sequence) tells his or her version of the story chronologically but each narrator chooses to discuss different elements in Kane's life depending on the interests of that narrator: News on the March is interested in those events that affected America and the world; Thatcher is only interested in making money and so only relates those moments when Kane gains or loses money; Bernstein relates events that have to do with the rise and fall of the newspaper; Leland thinks that Kane only wanted to be loved, so he recounts all of Kane's love affairs; Susie Alexander only recounts the events that involve herself; and Raymond, the Butler, who's trying to get money from Gerry, the faceless narrator, only relates events that might shed light on Kane's final words, "Rosebud." Bernstein and Thatcher (the latter unwittingly) present Kane in a positive light—a man of the people; Leland and Susie present Kane in a negative light—a self-deluded if pitiable egotist.
It is clear that Welles's choice to shoot many of his scenes in deep focus and in long takes had their origin in his past as a stage director: he was trying to preserve the integrity of theatrical space on the screen. In numerous sequences in Citizen Kane, because of the use of deep-focus photography in conjunction with long takes, our eyes have the same freedom to wander around the screen image as we have in the theater. We can focus on the actor who is speaking or instead watch the actor who is listening. Our eyes can move around the frame, focusing on whatever we choose. The realist director may design the mise-en-scène artfully, thereby guiding our attention to significant actions, but he or she does not have autocratic control over what we see, as happens when the action is broken down into short shots by editing or photographed in soft focus so that we can see only images in the foreground.
We are thus given a famous example of frame narrative; as is often the case with this narrative form, the act of transmission is especially highlighted, as is the unreliability of the sequence of narrators. In fact, the narrations tell us as much about the person recounting the events as it does about the person being described. It is up to the viewer to piece together the actual complete chronology of Kane's life, much as one might a jigsaw puzzle, the primary metaphor for this process within the film itself.
Works Cited
Fabe, Marilyn. Closely Watched Films: An Introduction to the Art of Narrative Film Technique.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.
