Directed, produced and starring Orson Welles, Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941), is famous for it’s many ‘remarkable scenes, cinematic and narrative technique and experimental innovations’ (Dirks, 1996). ... The focus of this essay is the picnic sequence that appears late in Susan Alexander’s recount to Thompson. Consisting of 23 shots and lasting for 2 minutes and 10 seconds, this scene signposts the end of the relationship between Susan and Kane.
In the previous scene, beside the enormous Xanadu fireplace, Susan is reduced to completing scores of jigsaw puzzles, depicting various outdoor scenes, as an escape from the cold and sterile situation that has estranged husband and wife. However, the couple are denied even the spontaneity and ease of the outdoors after Kane’s decision on a picnic (Jaffe, 1979, p. ... The 15-second blues-style musical cue begins during the fade from Kane at Xanadu to the first shot of this scene with muted trumpets playing in a dark and foreboding manner. ... Whilst travelling to the picnic the distant couple continue to argue and, as punctuation on Susan’s line “You never give me anything I really care about”, trombones join the trumpets and distort the motif, ‘highlighting Kane’s irrevocable authoritarianism and the uselessness of Susan’s efforts’ (Thomas, 1992, p. ... Using deep-focus cinematography, the mise-en-scene becomes vital in directing the attention of the audience; ‘In this style it is not the lens that makes the arrangements for our eye, it is our mind that is compelled to follow the dramatic spectrum in it’s entirety’ (Bazin, 1996, p. ... As the scene plays out, with obvious discrimination, Kane is lit using low-key illumination technique to cast a shadow over the left if his face. ... However, ‘we come to know Susan through the eyes of the filmmaker in the ‘narrative present’ and therefore, particularly in this scene, develop a sympathetic relationship with her ‘(Cardullo, 1986, p. ... The action in this scene is examined both dramatically and geometrically in terms of action, blocking, composition and framing. ... The use of long takes and brief cuts within this single sequence harness Citizen Kane’s unconventional emphasis on the full resources of both montage and mise-en-scene as an essential part of it’s visual unity. The music and sound effects are intended to be heard yet pass unnoticed, casually offering the viewer a key to the scene.
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