Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane is considered by many critics to be the best movie ever made. That title can be debated by anyone, but there's no denying that for it's time, Citizen Kane brought together cinematic elements that had never been done before. That is what makes the movie so timeless; seventy years later and many of these techniques are still in practice in movies today.

One of the techniques utilized really well was the lighting. Lighting played a very important role in conveying messages throughout the movie about characters or the plot. An example of this is the way that the journalist, Thompson, is lit the entire movie. His face is always shadowed so all we get is his silhouette. The director did this so that the audience doesn't register Thompson with too much importance in the film. The movie is supposed to be all about Kane, so to keep it from becoming about the journalist researching Kane, Wells has his face blacked out so we understand that he is not the main focus.


Another instance where the lighting is set to the mood of the scene is the one when Kane is finishing Leland's nasty review of Susan's performance. This is also the scene Leland gets fired. In it, Kane is shown sitting closer to the camera and off to the left, while Leland stands a little farther back and to the right. The way the lighting is set up, shadows half of Kane's face and body. This use of low key lighting is meant to make Kane appear more menacing and sinister, which fits the scene because he was writing a bad review of his own wife and about to fire his best friend. Then there's Leland who has a harsh frontal lighting on him during the scene. This makes him appear flat and helpless, as he is now not only an alcoholic, but an unemployed alcoholic.
A time where the lighting wasn't used as effectively is the first time that Thompson goes to interview Susan and she's wasted. In this scene, Susan is lit so that the shadows of her features cover her face a bit, giving her a slightly ominous look. I think that she should've been lit with a much harsher frontal light to make her appear more powerless, like how she actually is in the scene. We can tell by context that Susan is now/has been a drunk and as she's stumbling through her conversation with Thompson, the lighting would've been more effective if it did more to wash her out rather than make her appear mysterious.

The lighting in this movie did a lot to portray dominance in the film also. Often times, the shadow of one person was used to overcast a weaker character or the more dominant character would be shadowed to give him more mystic. Throughout the story, we could rely on the lighting to indicate what type of mood the scene was in. Any scene set in Xanadu was lit to be very shadowy, emphasizing the emptiness and lack of warmth/love in the home.
Another film that utilizes lighting to show dominance or importance is A Clockwork Orange. Take the famous tunnel scene for example. The back light gives the four crooks a tall shadow which stretches out, covering the old drunk they're about to beat up. Later in the cinema, when the doctors are treating Alex, the light of the projectors behind the doctors gives them a glowing outline. This, in addition to the low angle shot, makes them appear all-knowing and kind of God-like.