American Cinematographer – Citizen Kane WELLES

American Cinematographer – Citizen Kane

George Turner

March 1999

Source: American Cinematographer, March 1999, Vol. 80 Issue 3, p102, 2p
Item: 505799225

This was the first feature film produced and directed by the so-called "boy wonder" of stage and radio, Orson Welles. In 1939, at the age of 24, he was signed by RKO Radio to a producer-director-actor contract that gave him an advance of $150,000 and 25 percent of the gross receipts on each film.

Credit for the film's amazing visuals belongs mainly to Toland. Those who worked on the picture had no doubt that Welles was fully in charge, and that his ideas permeated every aspect of the picture. However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the look of Kane is almost identical to that of Toland's previous picture, The Long Voyage Home (1940), which was directed by John Ford. Welles and Ford were miles apart in directorial style, yet Voyage also utilizes the ceilingedsets, wide-angle lenses, hard side-lighting, and extreme deep-focus shots so closely associated with Kane. Perhaps Welles was impressed by Voyage, and wanted a similar style for his film; the fact that he insisted on borrowing Toland from Samuel Goldwyn, instead of using one of the excellent cinematographers under contract at RKO, suggests strongly that this was the case. To get Toland, RKO also had to hire his regular crew and rent the equipment Toland had personally modified at Goldwyn.

    Toland came aboard early and worked with Welles and art director Perry Ferguson on planning the overall design. He soon brought in camera operator Bert Shipman, assistant cameraman Eddie Garvin, gaffer W.J.McClellan and grip Ralph Hoge. With them came a Mitchell BNC which Toland had equipped with various accessories of his own design; eight f1.9-f2.5 Cooke and Astro lenses ranging from 24mm to six inches; various filters, diffusion screens, dimmers and flags; and other tools. Principal photography commenced quietly before the sets were even built, utilizing a studio projection room and some standing sets. Although Toland was in fragile health, he worked fast, like a man possessed. Welles later said that Toland quietly coached him in the intricacies of photographic techniques between shots, always in privacy so others on the set wouldn't notice.

    The extremely sharp, deep-focus photography and shadowed faces of Kane had their roots in certain German expressionist films of the 1920s, such as Der Golem (1920, photographed by Karl Freund, ASC), and were further developed in occasional unusual American pictures such as Transatlantic (1931, James Wong Howe, ASC), Frankenstein (1931, Arthur Edeson, ASC) and two other Toland films, Wuthering Heights (1938) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940). In Kane, Toland was able to carry "pan focus" beyond what he and his predecessors had previously achieved by utilizing the recently introduced Eastman Super XX film, which was four times faster than Super X; new coated lenses which increased light transmission; and some gadgets of his own design. His use of Waterhouse stops with cine lenses made it practical to photograph directly into the light without creating lens ghosts.

    The revolutionary photographic style of Citizen Kane was further enhanced by the optical camera effects of Linwood Dunn, ASC, who made possible some of the deepest deep-focus shots by compositing separate elements. Certain elaborate camera moves were also optically produced. Superior matte paintings by Mario Larrinaga provided some memorable visuals as well, such as the exterior of Kane's sprawling mansion, Xanadu.