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Home , Charles Laughton, Orson Welles, Robert Altman

FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS AMERICAN AND

American Expressionism and Orson Welles

Learning outcomes Students should be able to: • understand the term American Expressionism; and • explain the unique collaboration between the director and the cinematographer in and American Expressionism.

Course content

An evolving expressionist style of film- However, the filmmaker who might be said to making during the studio era can be seen both in define the termAmerican Expressionism is Orson Film Noir and in classics of the Horror genre such as Welles, the visionary director who employed Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) and The Bride of expressionist style throughout his career, from his Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935), Curse of the Cat ground-breaking film debut (1941) to People (Gunther von Fritsch, 1944) and The Night his last Hollywood movie, the noir classic Touch of of the Hunter (, Mitchum Evil (1958). (uncredited), 1955).

1 FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS / AMERICAN EXPRESSIONISM AND ORSON WELLES

Case Study: Citizen Kane (1941)

With Citizen Kane, the 26 year-old Orson Welles, a telescope) a short distance in front of his wide- made the most spectacular entrance into cinema angle lens. As Robert L. Carringer explains, “the history. Welles starred in, directed and co-wrote result is a forerunner of the extreme wide-angle the original screenplay, which explores the life fish-eye lens that came into general use in the story of an enigmatic American tycoon, Charles 1960’s.” (Carringer, 1996) Foster Kane, and follows the quest to discover the meaning of his dying word, “.” Greg Toland’s previous film, (1940) with director , features Citizen Kane’s reputation as the greatest compositions and many atmospheric scenes with achievement of the American cinema rests on the an expressionist lighting design. Welles encouraged many innovations in cinematic technique that Toland to push these formalist techniques even radically depart from the Classical Hollywood Style. further on Citizen Kane. These include: • expressionist lighting; lighting creates a dark and brooding • radical camera angles; atmosphere in key scenes such as the Death • flashbacks; of Kane, the Projection Room and the Thatcher • startling visual transitions; Library. Expressionist lighting techniques generate • elaborate tracking shots; an air of mystery and turning the quest • long takes; for the meaning of Rosebud into a journey through • compositions in depth the psychological darkness and despair that haunt • baroque set design; and . • overlapping sound. Throughout the film,extreme high and low angle The inventive use of lighting and shadow in compositions, expressive camera movements Citizen Kane has led some film historians to view and spatial distortion through the use of a it as the first “film noir” or, at least, the direct wide-angle lens are used to dramatise many predecessor of the Film Noir movement. Director, pivotal moments in Kane’s life when his ambition Orson Welles, and cinematographer, Greg Toland, overreaches itself and he is left isolated and alone. both share the main title card in the film’s credits – which is a tribute to one of American cinema’s As film scholar Marilyn Fabe explains, Welles most singular collaborations between director and employs low angles to project extreme psychological cinematographer. states; “While shooting from a low-angle perspective can make a character seem dominant and confident, In his book, The Making of Citizen Kane, film Welles’ camera plays an interesting variation on historian Robert L. Carringer describes the dynamic this technique by shooting Kane from a low angle working relationship between director and when he is most defeated. In the scene where cinematographer, “From the first days of shooting, Gettys threatens to expose Kane’s adulterous affair they approached the film together in a spirit of and Kane shouts at Gettys: “I’m no cheap, crooked revolutionary fervour…Those involved say there politician…I’m going to send you to Sing Sing,” the was a running game between the two with Welles low angle camera makes him seem demented and coming up with one far-fetched idea after another grandiose, rather than powerful and dominant. The and challenging Toland to produce it and Toland use of a wide-angle lens in this in combination delivering and then challenging Welles to ask for with the low angle and slight tilt of the camera something he could not produce.” makes the planes in the image above Kane seem jagged and off-kilter, again exteriorising Kane’s Through relentless experimentation, together they mental state.” (Fabe, 2004) came with up many ingenious visual devices and optical effects such as the distorted image of the The non-linear investigative nurse who enters Kane’s room in the mysterious of Citizen Kane is one of the film’s most radical opening scene. Welles wanted a surreal effect for departures from conventional Hollywood the scene and Toland achieved exactly this by storytelling. The use of multiple flashbacks, within placing a diminishing glass (which creates the an overlapping structure of six different narrators perspective of looking through the wrong end of recalling key events in the life of Charles Foster

2 FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS / AMERICAN EXPRESSIONISM AND ORSON WELLES

Kane, enables Welles to portray the many different the medium ground, and his mother with Thatcher in facets of Kane’s character and explore the inner the foreground. Through such in-depth composition, contradictions and complexity of human behaviour the director maintains a continuity of time and associated more with literature than with cinema. space that marked a high point of cinematic realism in the Hollywood of the 1940’s. Citizen Kane continually moves forward and backward in time through a series of imaginative Extreme sound realism was a characteristic of transitions that use sound and image to signal the director’s work in radio. In Citizen Kane, Welles temporal leaps. Years race by in the Breakfast Table set out to achieve a similar realism creating a montage where Kane’s disintegrating relationship naturalistic soundtrack of overlapping dialogue, with his first wife is visualised through seven exaggerated sound effects and extreme voice dizzying flash forwards in time. effects that can be best seen in the scenes in the Thatcher Library where sound resonates through Most remarkable of all is the pioneering use of the the empty space and high ceilings and in the great techniques of deep focus and the hall in Xanadu which Welles transforms into a giant in Citizen Kane. In the snowbound scene echo-chamber. where Thatcher meets with Kane’s parents, Welles uses the long take with deep focus cinematography Sound is also inventively used for scene transitions to execute a brilliantly expressive reverse tracking in mid-sentence (a device used frequently in radio) camera movement which keeps three planes of the such as when Leland begins to talk to a crowd in shot constantly in focus – the young Kane in the the street and Kane completes the sentence in an background seen through the window; his father in electioneering speech at a large rally.

Case Study: (1951)

Most film historians identify Touch of Evil as the The motif of the labyrinth appears most famously end of the classic Film Noir period. In this story of in the hall of mirrors in Citizen Kane and in The a rogue cop betrayed by his closest friend, Orson Lady from Shanghai and in the fruitless search Welles gives full vent to his expressionist aesthetic to unveil the mystery of Rosebud which only the employing radical camera angles, disorientating audience resolves. However, the motif is present in camera movements, deep-focus compositions, all of Welles’s major works. Terry Comito comments, distorting wide-angle lenses, off-centre framing “What Touch of Evil is most immediately about is and chiaroscuro lighting to create a Noir landscape the confrontation with the labyrinth or vortex that of violence and menace. The breathtaking three opens before us once we transgress the boundaries minute long take that opens the film is the most of a world in which we are pleased to suppose famous tracking shot in cinema history, parodied in ourselves to be at home…The habitual use of deep ’s The Player (1992). space, and the violent motion Welles sets plunging through it, means that any place a character may Orson Welles compared the visual design of his for a moment inhabit is only the edge of a depth films and his use of extreme spatial depth and that opens dizzily behind him.” (Comito, 1995) distorted perspective to a whirling labyrinth.

3 FACTFILE: GCE AS LEVEL MOVING IMAGE ARTS / AMERICAN EXPRESSIONISM AND ORSON WELLES

Case Study: (1948)

The vertigo that Orson Welles can induce through centre, tracking camera movements that convey a expressionist stylisation and his manipulation of real sense of depth. Turned on its axis, the camera deep space is best exemplified by the funhouse see-saws from low to high angles, creating a sequence from the climax of The Lady from dizzying feeling as if the floors are moving and the Shanghai (1948), one of the seminal American walls are closing in. The mood of entrapment and film noirs. In the film, Welles, director and star of mounting claustrophobia is captured in a number the film, draws upon many classic expressionist of radically stylised, unbalanced compositions. techniques to portray a man trapped in a bizarre, nightmare landscape. The sequence also features Low-key lighting is used throughout the sequence many noir conventions including the first-person to trap the character in a frightening world of narration of a male character trapped in a web of shadows and to create a strong sense of depth. The deception and a mysterious femme fatale who expressionist lighting scheme creates an atmosphere appears from out of the darkness. of fear and menace as darkness surrounds the character and threatens to swallow him up. Shadows Cinematic expressionism employs visual also completely dominate the frame in a number of distortion and exaggeration to convey extreme key shots within the sequence. emotional states. The mise-en-scène of this noir sequence is heavily distorted and plays with References: Carringer, R. L. (1996). The Making of Citizen Kane. perspective in the exaggerated style of German University of Press, Chapter 4, p. 81. Expressionism. The weird fairground setting is also Comito, T. (1995). Touch of Evil. New Jersey: Rutgers University reminiscent of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Robert Press, pps. 12-14. Wiene, 1920). Fabe, M. (2004). Closely Watched Films. University of California Press, Chapter 5, pps. 93-94. The spatial distortion and exaggeration of size and scale in the mise-en-scène is also reflected in Sarris, A. (1969). Interviews with Film Directors. , p. 532. Orson Welles’ unorthodox camera style. The main character’s journey through the maze of attractions is framed in deep-focus through a series of off-

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