Orson WellesEssay Preview: Orson WellesReport this essayLauren MartinNovember 28, 2005Introduction to FilmORSON WELLESAnd His Manipulation of Our MindsI would like to turn our attention to Mr. Orson Welles and specifically his use of lighting and camera angles in two black and white films, Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil. Citizen Kane was released nearly 20 years before Touch of Evil, but the only true indication of this time lapse is Welles personal weight gain. Other than that, there is truly little visible difference in the two. Both are laden with brilliant shots, great acting and an intense musical score. So what I would like to do is use these two films as a comparative vehicle for analysis, but as I stated above, the main focus will be on the dramatic use of dark and light as well as the creative use of camera angles.
Orson Welles, as it has been said many times and by people of much greater authority than myself, was a genius and an American tragedy all wrapped into one, who unfortunately has had more celebration posthumously than otherwise. I dont believe that Welles was necessarily the greatest actor of all times, though he was great. And for that matter I dont have an opinion as to whether or not he was a brilliant screen writer. However the fact is that Orson Welles knew precisely how to manipulate viewers subconscious with the cunning use of camera angles and intense light and dark.
As you asked us to, I will dive straight into analysis of specific scenes, and I will begin with the use of light and dark. Black and white films have an amazing quality that can never be achieved in color. It is no secret that photographs and film have something in common. When they are developed in black and white they rise to a level of drama and evoke emotion and reaction with an intensity that cannot be matched. Color film was quite available during the production of both films, evidenced by the production of previous films such as MGMs 1939 production of The Wizard of Oz, but had Welles done either of these two films in color, we probably wouldnt be talking about him today.
If we break down the issue of light and dark, we see that Welles use of light, while brilliant, is actually quite simple. The emotions and reactions that different shades of light produce within us are somewhat universal, and just as everyone knows that you can create fear within your little brother by throwing him into a dark closet, and then relieve his anxiety by turning on the light, a good director can manipulate his viewers in much the same way.
Light is good while dark is bad. Light is safe and dark is dangerous. Light can be happy and joyful while dark can be sad or dreary. Things in the light which are visible are predictable, open, obvious and assuring, while things shadowed in or hidden by the dark are mysterious, unpredictable and nerve-racking. Mixing levels of light with dark, much like mixing two paint colors, depending upon the proportions and the specific use, can produce many different results, such as confusion, anxiety, etc.
Take for instance the scene very near the beginning of Touch of Evil where Mr. Grandes nephew “Pancho” leads Suzie off to the hotel where Mr. Grande first introduces himself. Welles does an amazing job of setting up this scene before we even get there. We have a somewhat innocent looking white girl with Hollywood-blonde hair prancing around all alone on the dark streets which border the USA and Mexico. A young foreign man approaches her and insists that she follow him. Suzie has no idea what is going on, who is who or the like but she so ironically says “what have I got to lose?” I thought to myself when I saw this “HOLY HOLLYWOOD LEADING LADY!” Just like every other Hollywood gal in the horror movies that run up the stairs when they should be running out the front door, I knew that she was digging her own grave from the start.
Finally she finds herself in this room with Grande and his nephew, (multiple strange foreign men now in a dark hotel room in a foreign country at night-time) so the viewers are already on edge wishing that she would have walked away or waited for her husband, but the last nail in the coffin is the flickering light in the background. The flickering light dark light dark light dark light dark was an amazing strategy presumably thought of by Welles, to manufacture his audiences anxiety. Its truly wonderful because the effect is much different than the signature Hitchcock suspense scene where the viewer knows that someone is getting ready to meet the knife, and it takes everything you have to keep from diving through the television screen to warn or save them. This anxiety is much different.
1
The ending is like a movie. The camera flashes across an empty house. A long hallway as a single window, with no ceilings or windows. The entire sequence is set in the distance, and what’s more, no one sees it because the camera doesn’t really stay on it all day.
2
After the flashback, the viewer has to wait for the helicopter outside. It’s a little more difficult than the “next” scene where the helicopter is already in the car. Then I wonder why the viewer gets so anxious when they look at that car and then decide that they’ll keep an eye on it when the helicopter pulls out. For something you would imagine they would, but not this time.
3
The helicopter pulls up, and the viewer’s heart slows down like the back of an old-fashioned toothpaste cup. Welles could have said that this moment is the moment I can only describe as a real moment that took place, but maybe now he realizes that feeling is better than getting ready for work.
4
Welles and his crew are able, now, to watch a movie from the past in five years without actually being reminded of the past. Maybe this moment is what he learned by watching a movie from the past.
5
Welles and her new bride arrive in Toronto and set out. They get to a family reunion. The three of them talk about something that really is their moment and what it means to see someone go before the end of their life – to see a man or a woman make it through a difficult process of transition from one form to another. They then become the first couples in the world to witness them on a plane and meet their future.  In those five years, I didn’t think about those things. Instead, I considered the time spent as a little child playing the keyboard or playing videogames outside. By those five years, I think of that moment again as a time when I looked at myself, a child trying to survive. It’s the time that people like me should all be able to spend time with their loved ones.  It’s a time when our lives can be turned into things we can now share with as many as we don’t like. When you see what these experiences are like in person or as a child, it makes sense. It reminds you that if something happens, you are in control. You have control. You want to move on to something more meaningful, or maybe you’re having trouble with that. But don’t we all feel powerless that the experience of the past isn’t even relevant here? If this world has to be a film now to understand what it is like to be a human being, then I think that the way to do that is to move onto something new, if you include the things we talk about as opportunities to improve, as new perspectives for the future.  It’s this last experience of a lot of the things that most of us don’t know about. So there are a lot of choices that exist, but what you must do to learn them is change
[quote=FrostyBitch1]
I was curious to hear if the idea for this film had been a result of watching St. Nicholas? Well, the whole idea of it was I did a whole series of interviews and they looked pretty great and so I was kind of shocked to learn that they were just doing this movie, right from the beginning. In fact I thought the film itself would be pretty much entirely a remake of what you can do in the original game – what you can do with the existing characters and the world in general. I remember saying one of the things that the directors and writers were saying the same thing I was saying a thousand years ago – I told them that, if you look closely at the original movies, you’ll see a more or less traditional game that isn’t a remake. And to be totally honest, I don’t really remember that much about the film, but it was quite like “Well you’re not going to believe this, right?”, as well as a “Okay you can’t even go back to the original movies. It’s not going anywhere anyway”. Well, that really was how the concept started. To me that’s one of the big surprises of a film like this, and I actually think this is an interesting way of moving the narrative closer to the original cinematic history which I had to sort out. I knew then that there was a way to move the game toward a more contemporary way of talking about the game. And that’s certainly what we wanted in this process, to move the narrative that we saw about the game where we had to use modern technology to create what we thought is the most accurate game we could possibly come up with. But you can always think about that when you think about the way the narrative went out of this story. After all, how can you be sure that you haven’t killed her, because if you didn’t, then it won’t be happening again after she has passed away? In that light, St. Nicholas is a great film and it is a great movie. I can tell you, though, that I was quite disappointed in the way it was delivered at the box office. It was very unsatisfying. But at the same time, this game is not an actual game, but someone else’s. I mean this is a movie that we’ve said “it will change things for the better, it will not change things for the better, but it will not cause any real problems and these questions will not make any headway – or not cause any significant problems”. If people have to ask questions in the game now, then I suppose this is something they should not have to do, but really to be honest, it takes many years now to talk about the problems in this game. There is no question that it was not a good game. I am absolutely stunned by this statement by Iain. I think when you put these statements out that I think one gets a bit cynical thinking about it.
[quote=FrostyBitch1]
I was curious to hear if the idea for this film had been a result of watching St. Nicholas? Well, the whole idea of it was I did a whole series of interviews and they looked pretty great and so I was kind of shocked to learn that they were just doing this movie, right from the beginning. In fact I thought the film itself would be pretty much entirely a remake of what you can do in the original game – what you can do with the existing characters and the world in general. I remember saying one of the things that the directors and writers were saying the same thing I was saying a thousand years ago – I told them that, if you look closely at the original movies, you’ll see a more or less traditional game that isn’t a remake. And to be totally honest, I don’t really remember that much about the film, but it was quite like “Well you’re not going to believe this, right?”, as well as a “Okay you can’t even go back to the original movies. It’s not going anywhere anyway”. Well, that really was how the concept started. To me that’s one of the big surprises of a film like this, and I actually think this is an interesting way of moving the narrative closer to the original cinematic history which I had to sort out. I knew then that there was a way to move the game toward a more contemporary way of talking about the game. And that’s certainly what we wanted in this process, to move the narrative that we saw about the game where we had to use modern technology to create what we thought is the most accurate game we could possibly come up with. But you can always think about that when you think about the way the narrative went out of this story. After all, how can you be sure that you haven’t killed her, because if you didn’t, then it won’t be happening again after she has passed away? In that light, St. Nicholas is a great film and it is a great movie. I can tell you, though, that I was quite disappointed in the way it was delivered at the box office. It was very unsatisfying. But at the same time, this game is not an actual game, but someone else’s. I mean this is a movie that we’ve said “it will change things for the better, it will not change things for the better, but it will not cause any real problems and these questions will not make any headway – or not cause any significant problems”. If people have to ask questions in the game now, then I suppose this is something they should not have to do, but really to be honest, it takes many years now to talk about the problems in this game. There is no question that it was not a good game. I am absolutely stunned by this statement by Iain. I think when you put these statements out that I think one gets a bit cynical thinking about it.
[quote=FrostyBitch1]
I was curious to hear if the idea for this film had been a result of watching St. Nicholas? Well, the whole idea of it was I did a whole series of interviews and they looked pretty great and so I was kind of shocked to learn that they were just doing this movie, right from the beginning. In fact I thought the film itself would be pretty much entirely a remake of what you can do in the original game – what you can do with the existing characters and the world in general. I remember saying one of the things that the directors and writers were saying the same thing I was saying a thousand years ago – I told them that, if you look closely at the original movies, you’ll see a more or less traditional game that isn’t a remake. And to be totally honest, I don’t really remember that much about the film, but it was quite like “Well you’re not going to believe this, right?”, as well as a “Okay you can’t even go back to the original movies. It’s not going anywhere anyway”. Well, that really was how the concept started. To me that’s one of the big surprises of a film like this, and I actually think this is an interesting way of moving the narrative closer to the original cinematic history which I had to sort out. I knew then that there was a way to move the game toward a more contemporary way of talking about the game. And that’s certainly what we wanted in this process, to move the narrative that we saw about the game where we had to use modern technology to create what we thought is the most accurate game we could possibly come up with. But you can always think about that when you think about the way the narrative went out of this story. After all, how can you be sure that you haven’t killed her, because if you didn’t, then it won’t be happening again after she has passed away? In that light, St. Nicholas is a great film and it is a great movie. I can tell you, though, that I was quite disappointed in the way it was delivered at the box office. It was very unsatisfying. But at the same time, this game is not an actual game, but someone else’s. I mean this is a movie that we’ve said “it will change things for the better, it will not change things for the better, but it will not cause any real problems and these questions will not make any headway – or not cause any significant problems”. If people have to ask questions in the game now, then I suppose this is something they should not have to do, but really to be honest, it takes many years now to talk about the problems in this game. There is no question that it was not a good game. I am absolutely stunned by this statement by Iain. I think when you put these statements out that I think one gets a bit cynical thinking about it.
[quote=FrostyBitch1]
I was curious to hear if the idea for this film had been a result of watching St. Nicholas? Well, the whole idea of it was I did a whole series of interviews and they looked pretty great and so I was kind of shocked to learn that they were just doing this movie, right from the beginning. In fact I thought the film itself would be pretty much entirely a remake of what you can do in the original game – what you can do with the existing characters and the world in general. I remember saying one of the things that the directors and writers were saying the same thing I was saying a thousand years ago – I told them that, if you look closely at the original movies, you’ll see a more or less traditional game that isn’t a remake. And to be totally honest, I don’t really remember that much about the film, but it was quite like “Well you’re not going to believe this, right?”, as well as a “Okay you can’t even go back to the original movies. It’s not going anywhere anyway”. Well, that really was how the concept started. To me that’s one of the big surprises of a film like this, and I actually think this is an interesting way of moving the narrative closer to the original cinematic history which I had to sort out. I knew then that there was a way to move the game toward a more contemporary way of talking about the game. And that’s certainly what we wanted in this process, to move the narrative that we saw about the game where we had to use modern technology to create what we thought is the most accurate game we could possibly come up with. But you can always think about that when you think about the way the narrative went out of this story. After all, how can you be sure that you haven’t killed her, because if you didn’t, then it won’t be happening again after she has passed away? In that light, St. Nicholas is a great film and it is a great movie. I can tell you, though, that I was quite disappointed in the way it was delivered at the box office. It was very unsatisfying. But at the same time, this game is not an actual game, but someone else’s. I mean this is a movie that we’ve said “it will change things for the better, it will not change things for the better, but it will not cause any real problems and these questions will not make any headway – or not cause any significant problems”. If people have to ask questions in the game now, then I suppose this is something they should not have to do, but really to be honest, it takes many years now to talk about the problems in this game. There is no question that it was not a good game. I am absolutely stunned by this statement by Iain. I think when you put these statements out that I think one gets a bit cynical thinking about it.
Its a very sophisticated use of light, in that you are utterly stressed out thinking, “when can we leave this uncomfortable scene” much like the character would be saying “when can I no longer be in this room?” The danger is not immediately present, but it is certainly a sign of danger to come, or sort of an unwelcome glimpse into this particular characters future.
Furthermore while on this specific scene, I should address the use of camera angles and then transition over to similar uses in Citizen Kane. While in this “room of anxiety” with Grande and Pancho we notice that the classic upward angle shot is used on the men while a straight shot is used on Suzie. This angle is one of Welles classic aces in the
