This evening, I watched Citizen Kane for something like the fourth time. I wanted to see if I would pick up on different things now, many years after first seeing it. And maybe I did. It’s hard to say. I think his wife annoyed me more than in the past. I once heard or read a supposed MLK Jr. quotation that’s something to the effect of, we all must die alone and have faith alone. I think prior to being hospitalized for strokes, that was very theoretical to me, but now it feels very visceral and, like, serious.
But I actually wanted to comment on 1940s and 1950s cinema lighting. Last night, I watched a Hitchcock movie — “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” and in both that and Citizen Kane, I quite like the lighting of that era. In both movies, there were certain practices that were normal at the time but would not fly now. For instance, in the Hitchcock movie, I distinctly remember a nighttime shot that had clearly been shot during the day with a filter. Similarly, there were many scenes tonight that were clearly shot with lights pointed at the actors’ face. Today, both would seem very amateurish, but the lighting work, in particular, did an effective job of communicating emotional weight, while certainly reminding the audience that the movie was distinct from reality.
To borrow a line from Forrest Gump, “and that’s all I’ve got to say about that.”