It might be fair to say that movies have been going through a bit of a stagnant stage over
the last decade and a half.
I would mark the end of the nineties and the beginning of the 2000’s as the end of cinemas
first stage of maturation; I’m not just referring to the technical stages of maturity
that film has undergone: from silent, to sound, to color and so on.
I’m also referring to the language of film.
The language of film is the conversation that a filmmaker is having with an audience using
visuals: the people who are trying to tell a story through the medium of movies, which
is usually the director and his or her crew, are forming or denoting a message using visual
cues and the viewer is interpreting or connoting what those visual cues mean in order to understand
and take away their own message from the story.
Montage, jump cuts, shot, reverse shot, POV shot, dutch angles, ant's eye angle, God’s eye,
zooms, tracking shots, pans, transitions, etcetera, etcetera
are all examples of the language of film, in the same way that written language has periods, semi colons, hyphens,
parenthesis, words, you get it.
The nineties up through the early 2000’s had threads of all cinema, from the beginnings
of film through the golden age where Hollywood found a niche: glamorous set pieces, heightened
emotionality and a three act structure, to Italian neo realism, new wave, and so on,
but it also had some new innovations.
Where certain aspects of storytelling were held back by the limitations of special effects
before pre nineties, around the beginning of the nineties there emerged a mostly believable
version of cgi to create some of the more elusive effects that filmmakers desired to showcase.
So the ability to form certain kinds of visuals became more advanced and storytellers were
able to stretch their legs and convey their filmic vocabulary a bit more and ... that
was it; that was the last real advance for the language of film.
Sure, cgi has gotten more photo realistic over the years, but where’s the newest trend
in film language?
And no, superhero movies are not a new trend in the language of film; they are a genre
and not even a new genre, I wouldn’t even count film as an innovator of genre anyway,
literature is the king of genre and film is more like a borrower of the innumerable genres
that literature has innovated.
Genre isn’t the reason for the stagnancy in modern cinema though, that’s not where
movies have lost their mojo, people are not miffed at the hundredth super hero film; if
it’s good, I’d watch it … whatever.
Stories and genre are a recyclable enterprise.
When a director interprets a screenplay, what you see most of the time up on screen is a
recycled piece of literature set to visuals.
Recycled, yet, sometimes, surprisingly original; taking a story and or genre that has been
done before and giving it a spin or a twist.
As for the film language used to tell these recycled stories that too is recycled: really
recycled and copied from other movies.
I don’t mind a good homage: Tarantino does it, Spielberg, Scorsese, Lucas, and they know
how to make what is essentially ripping off other directors into some pretty compelling
work, but if every time I read a novel it was in the style of Hemingway I think I might
stop reading novels until that mistake was fixed.
I think directors and producers have gotten away with Frankensteining styles and innovations
in film language from other directors, the auteurs of cinema, for too long.
Oh look, there’s Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Kubrick, D.W.
Griffith, Fritz Lang.
Plagiarizing- I mean paying homage has proven to make some really great films in the hands
of good filmmakers, but cracks in this formula are starting to appear; audiences, are becoming
apathetic and are starting to, on some level, feel that maybe they’ve seen this film before.
Because, yes they have, again and again and again.
The obscure languages of film that the general public at one point had not seen were taken
by film buffs, popularized and now everyone’s seen them and seen them and ...
And that’s where I think film becomes stagnant; a variation on an old type of story is fine,
we’ve been doing it for thousands of years and really no complaints yet: Star Wars, The
Matrix, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Lion King: what do they all have in common?
They’re the story of the hero’s journey.
Fun little factoid.
They’re all the same sort of story and we all love them.
The problem with modern films is the way the story is told.
Film language needs a new stage of evolution and pronto, but let’s not put the cart before
the horse; the language of film is the language a filmmaker uses to tell a story, so story
should come first and the filmic language second.
That’s why I think Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane is the perfect case study for revamping
the language of film today.
Kane’s story is the driving force behind all the innovations in the movie accomplished
to expand film’s vocabulary.
The techniques here are used to reinforce the moral or thesis of the the movie whether
metaphorically, tonally or stylistically.
The moral through line of Kane could be many things but I would boil it down to, the world
and the way it operates can foster a selfish person who is absent of love and innocence,
don’t allow the world to do this to you.
I’m going to talk about four filmic languages that Citizen Kane innovated and or improved
upon to support this moral: deep focus staging, the wipe transition, the long crane shot and
the camera moving through objects shot.
Let’s start with deep focus staging; a deep focus shot is when everything in the frame
is in focus no matter how far it is away from the camera.
Before Citizen Kane was released in 1941 there was precedence for deep focus shots, but there’s
a reason why Citizen Kane is cited as an innovator in this field; not only is the whole shot
in focus, but there in the layers of the image that scale back to, at moments, ten times
smaller than what is in the foreground, there is something happening, something moving,
something adding to the narrative.
Take this shot for example, one layer is Kane, the protagonist, who is massive and, like
his character, self important in the foreground, the next layer is the partition and curved
piece of wall, isolating kane from and framing out the people around him, next is Jedediah
who, being framed out and set up to be ridiculed and fired for offending Kane is noticeably
smaller than his soon to be ex boss who, once again looms like a god to our perspective
in front of him.
Then there’s the layers of ceiling that accentuate how far back Bernstein is, who
is a loyal lackey to kane and in the general context of the story nothing more than a peon
to his interests; hence the size.
So all in this shot we have a self important Kane who has isolated himself with his selfishness,
lack of empathy and care and minimized and driven away everyone around him which ties
directly into the moral of the film.
The framing can even be seen as a representation of the way Kane’s is perceiving his own
reality.
The long crane shots in Citizen Kane are a lot of fun and the intellectual payload is
beautiful.
Check out this shot.
As we follow Kane’s mother to the table to literally sell her son, little Kane who
is playing shrinks into the background.
The mother, with her mind on wealth, is taking over the frame and the innocent little Kane
is dwindling away, playing in an idyllic, shrinking frame with his sled, “Rosebud”,
his last words, what he lost when he was sold off into affluence, his innocence.
Nice.
Oh, if you haven’t watched the movie, sorry, but that’s the end.
Okay.
Then there’s the moving through objects shot.
This one is especially relevant to the thesis of the movie.
Who’s telling the story of Citizen Kane?
I mean, besides the filmmakers, who’s telling it metaphorically; you know, the style in
which the film was shot.
A camera that can move through objects suggests a spiritual omnipresence.
Am I saying that Welles used a God-like perspective to tell his story?
Well, that’s not too far fetched: the narrative stretches all over Kane’s life, jumping
into memories, gliding over buildings, passing through windows and doors.
This is a storyteller that can enter minds, go throughout all time and pass through any
object.
If that’s not a God-esque narrative, then--But why would Orson want to take on the perspective
of God?
Because of the importance of the message; the moral.
This isn’t just your everyday morality tale this is a message for all mankind: if you
follow this path you’ll end up like this, don’t allow this to happen to you.
The innovations to the language of film in Citizen Kane can be summed up in a word: practical.
Every new and or improved technique used connects back to the narrative
and moral.
So maybe for the future, the next film innovators should follow Welles’ lead: know all the
layers of the story you’re telling and make sure that it has depth so the visuals that
appear on the surface can really take off and shape movies for years to come.