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14.9.10

A Purely Visual Guide to the Brilliance of Citizen Kane

This is a series of screenshots of the 1941 movie Citizen Kane. I'll let the images speak for themselves.































FINAL THOUGHTS

Sorry to subject you to what is essentially my prep for an upcoming podcast about Citizen Kane, but just look at those images. They don't make movies like that anymore. In fact, I'm not sure they ever did.

The rest is silence.

5 comments:

  1. They don't make movies like that anymore. In fact, I'm not sure they ever did.

    Så filmen findes altså ikke?

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  2. @Kasper
    Well, de skal jo lave den første, før de kan faile i at lave andre som den. Riiight?

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  3. One word - Casablanca.

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  4. @jnc
    That one's cool too, but this is superior on a visual level.

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  5. My computer challenged friend Thomas Rostock asked me to post this on his behalf, which I'll gladly do, since I couldn't agree more.

    Thomas says:

    God, love those monocrome screengrabs!

    Michael Powell once said: "There are two kind of directors: directors of b&w and directors of color. I'm a b&w director" (meaning his approach to his amazing technicolor films were firmly rooted in b&w aesthetics). Orson Welles was and arguably remains the high priest of b&w motion pictures. Just look a those high contrasts and subtle shadings of gray. The deep focus and low angles and especially noteworthy are the 45 degrees cross-cuts through the screen by way of clever use of lights and setdesign. It's artistic craftsmanship like this which makes all the soft-contrast photography made for DI today look all the poorer in comparison... well, "poorer" is I suppose a rather charitable term when all is said and done, so let's just call them as we see them: they look like utter crap!

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