Moving Pictures

Your Name: John Schroeder

Quiz #7

–3/31/2021 Chapter 10–Orson Welles and the Modern Sound Film

1.

Who is Susan Alexander Kane? Write two full detailed sentences (you

can Still answer this question in detail, even if you haven’t seen the

film yet, because the book discusses her alot).

Susan Alexander Kane is one of Citizen Kane’s wives, she had a

failing singing career that Kane pushed on to her and had attempted

suicide to escape the marriage. After leaving Kane and Kane’s death

we see her working in a nightclub refusing to give any information to

Thompson. After realizing Kane had become distant and cynical

Susan decided to finally leave him for good.

2. What is composition in depth (deep focus), and

how does Orson Welles use it, according to our chapter?

Deep focus is the use of wide angle lenses with small lens

attachments to create a wide shot that had a sharper look opposed to

the “Soft” look that many filmmakers enjoyed during the time. Welles

made use of it to emphasize the use of cut-style editing where instead

of having every transition be a cut he could save them for more

impactful moments and use a dissolve instead. Another way he used it

was to create metaphors without using montage like the difference of

Kane’s presence on screen going from almost a giant in a foreground

to a distant figure.

3. What is a newsreel, and how are newsreels related to Citizen

Kane? Spill your guts!

Newsreels were 20 minute long films that focused on topics of the

news, they played before feature films in theaters in the 1910’s to the

1970’s. Newsreels and journalism in general are obviously a big piece

of Citizen Kane’s narrative, it parodies the conservative “March of

Time” Newsreels, it’s a story about a journalist trying to find meaning

in the words of the dead Kane, and Kane also had a chain of

newspapers.
4. What does our textbook argue about the meaning of “Rosebud” in

Citizen Kane? (several possible answers...not necessarily your own

interpretation)

The textbook gives a hollow interpretation of Kane’s apparent love for

inanimate objects as he has failed to ever feel this way towards

people. The thing he lost turned out to be his sled that he owned as a

child and shows that not only was he only thinking about material

things before he died but what the textbook sees as a regressive

thought of a bitter old man on his deathbed.

5.

Citizen Kane is considered the first“ Modern sound film.” What are

some of the reasons the textbook gives?

BONUS:

Why was Citizen Kane a flop at the box office in 1941?What kept it

from being successful?(The answer should strike fear in the hearts of

artists!)
SCORE: _________ out of 5 points on QUIZ 7