Comparing 'The Great Train Robbery And Orson Welles' Citizen Kane

Tricks of the Eye I chose to visually compare Michael Crichton’s The Great Train Robbery with Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. I have watched all the movies on the list and thought that two films would have several characteristics to compare. The Great Train Robbery was a revolutionary film that was one of the first in the Western Genres. Citizen Kane’s greatness comes from the fact that it remains relevant over 70 years after its premier. The Great Train Robbery used advanced filming techniques for the time and approached story telling in a way that had never been done before in movies. The storyline became a classic, bandits setup and rob a train, they are chased by a posy as they flee, they get caught, and justice is served. With cameras becoming lighter, and more maneuverable and portable, the movie was able to break from the studio sets and use different location shots for different scenes. Different camera effects were also employed, such as panning, tilting, and taking advantage of the scenes depth by moving towards the camera.
Editing is what truly set …show more content…
This film disrupts the chronological timeline and simple point of view even more than the former film had. The use of flashbacks plays a vital role in exploring the life of Charles Foster Kane throughout the film. Much of this we see through the unreliable viewpoints of various friends, colleagues, and lovers of the recently deceased Kane. The focus of which, is to discover who Kane really is. The audience is never given an answer, as everyone sees different sides. This is best shown in the shot where Kane stands in front of two mirrors, and his reflection is shows repeatedly between the two. In exploring his life, we see the use of different symbols, such as the sled Rosebud and a snow globe, and motifs such as loss and the unreliable human