George Orson Welles was born in May 6 , the year 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He co-wrote His first film, Citizen Kane in 1941, producing, directing, and starring in it as Charles Foster Kane (Welles & Bogdanovich, 1993). Citizen Kane 1941 Breakfast Montage compresses Kane’s marriage to Emily through a montage, which is a cinematographic technique used to link people with experiences, moments and discontinuities that were fragmented across of the urban experience thereby allowing the audience to make associations between them (Grosvenor, Lawn & Rousmaniere, 2000).
Kane’s marriage to Emily is a breakfast table montage covering a period of nine years (Cowan, 2012). The implied director George Orson Welles describes this phenomenon at the beginning of the montage as,’ a couple who did not see each other except at breakfast.’ The temporarily detached narrator-at the beginning of the montage presents an the sole authority to the description of the characters (Chatman, 1984). The scenes are set in the same place, the breakfast table, only with a few changes in wardrobe to provide visual variety, special effects and low lighting form high windows. Orson Welles believed in the theory that the cinematography should find suitable ways of interpreting a story through elaborate camera movements, setting and dialogue between the characters.
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The Passage of Time is shown through the aging of the characters and the changing relationship between Kane and his first wife Emily. The concept of time is compressed using the technique of transitional dissolves also known as curtain wipes, to move the audience from one scene to another and to link the deterioration of the relationship with time. Their Communication gets less friendly, and becomes more antagonistic, until finally, they stop talking to each other. For example, at the beginning of their marriage, Emily and Charles appear to be young and very much in love with each other, they have just returned from a night party still wearing their evening gowns. While Seated close to each other at the breakfast table, the table has been cleared of everything except the morning tea earthen ware. The director Uses over-lapping speech between the couple to show that they are in love and excited about life. Charles uses praising words towards his new bride by saying, "you are beautiful! Yes you are, you are very very beautiful" while Emily on the other hand is cross talking over his remarks with, ‘I have never been to six parties before in my whole life.’ And Charles continues talking, ‘extremely beautiful.’ Cross talk adds to the upbeat mood of the first scene.
Elaborate camera movements are used to portray the emotional distance that has developed between the couple. In the last scene which signifies the ninth year into marriage, shows Emily dressed down in her night gown, she appears to be lacking any sort of makeup. They are sitting at opposite sides of the table separated by candle sticks, food and immersed into reading newspapers in silence. The camera slowly pulls back into a wide angle shot in order to capture the couple seated at opposite ends of a long table. The wide angle shot also reveals the amount of empty space between the couple, which visually represents emotional distance that conflict can create in marriages, both literally and metaphorically. The director, of Citizen Kane also uses low angle shots bringing the camera close to floor level which creates the effect of looking up at the couple, to make them look meaner, dominant and authoritative revealing resoluteness to the conflict. There is no verbal dialogue in this scene; combined with a wary background soundtrack the director creates a mysterious mood around the status of their relationship.
The director, of Citizen Kane uses the point of view of the subjective, subjective view, to show emotional tension between the couple. Close up shots are used, especially when Emily is complaining to Charles about his obsessive work schedule. She says, ‘What do you do in a newspaper in the middle of the night?’ Adorning a moustache while seated at the other end of the table separated by a bouquet of flowers he says, ‘Emily, my dear, your only correspondent is the Inquirer .’ During such dialogues, close up shots are employed to focus on the characters, rather than their surroundings. This technique invites the audience into the conflict, allowing them to empathize with the characters hence building anxiety and tension of the play.
References:
Chatman, S. (1984). What is Description in the Cinema?. Cinema Journal , 4-11.
Cowan, P. (2012). Authorship and the Director of Photography: a case study of Gregg Toland and Citizen Kane. Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network , 5 (1).
Grosvenor, I., Lawn, M., & Rousmaniere, K. (2000). Imaging past schooling: the necessity for montage. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies , 22 (1), 71-85.
Welles, O., & Bogdanovich, P. (1993). Orson Welles . New York.
