I watched Citizen Kane (1941), appreciating the work of Orson Welles and Gregg Tolandagain, as a camera operator, or cinematographer, this time. Wells injected the Citizen Kane with the symbolism: rosebud.
'Rosebud' is the trade name of a cheap little sled on which Kane was playing on the day he was taken away from his home and his mother. In his subconscious it represented the simplicity, the comfort, above all the lack of responsibility in his home, and also it stood for his mother's love which Kane never lost.
The protagonist of my "failure story" must retreat from a democracy which his money fails to buy and his power fails to control. —There are two retreats possible: death and the womb. The house was the womb. Here too was all the grandeur, all the despotism, which my man had found lacking in the outside world. Such was his estate—such was the obvious repository for a collection large enough to include, without straining the credulity of the audience—a little toy from the dead past of a great man.
- Film Release date: September 5, 1941 (USA)
- Director: Orson Welles
- Cinematography: Gregg Toland
After all my training, plus testing with fluid head on a monopod and a tripod, a shoulder rig, and the huge lights in the lighting class, I saw new nuances to the light composition in the film.
