Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane The movie opens with a fade-in on foggy, forlorn Xanadu, a palatial estate off the Florida coast, where Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men, dies whispering the word "Rosebud." Fade-out, then a flat cut to a "March of Time"-like documentary which presents a thumbnail sketch of the life of publishing magnate Kane (a brilliant and entertaining means of dispensing a maximum amount of exposition …

…perspective. Behind Kane on the wall is a window that seems to be of average size. But as he walks toward it, we see it is further away and much higher than we thought. Eventually he stands beneath its lower sill, shrunken and diminished. Then as he walks toward us, his stature grows again. A man always seems the same size to himself, because he does not stand where we stand to look at him.