Deep Focus            

Citizen Kane, Orson Wells’s masterpiece, has gone down in history as one of the greatest movies ever made. What makes it so unique is the introduction of the many different film techniques used. If you were to watch films that were created prior to Citizen Kane, you wouldn’t have the deep focus, or the low angled shots that made this movie so special. One aspect that truly caught my eye and made me think was deep focus. This technique happens when the foreground, middle ground, and background are all in focus. Before Citizen Kane was produced, deep focus was never used.  

            During the flashback scene known as the “civil war” scene, where we see Charles as a young boy, deep focus really caught the viewers eye. The scene starts out with the camera only on young Charles playing in the snow and eventually tracks back so we see the mother in the foreground, the father in the middle ground and young Charles in the background. This allows the viewer to decide which aspect is most important, rather than limiting their attention to a specific character or object.  Most of the attention in this scene can be put towards the mother, who is in the foreground, because she is signing papers that took the control of Charles life away. This was the beginning to Charles mysterious and dark life, which eventually ends with him wifeless, in a mansion, dying alone.