Regular readers of this blog will now that photography is one of my favourite facets of movie-making. Were you to ask me about my favourite cinematographers of all time, I'd probably rifle off a list including the likes of Roger Deakins, Robert Richardson, Conrad L. Hall, Freddie Young, among many others. But if you asked me for the greatest photographic achievement in film history, I'd cite one title and one title only: Orsen Welles' influential masterpiece Citizen Kane is the behemoth that sits atop the apex of cinematic form and style.
Believe it or not, director of photography Gregg Toland was criticized upon Citizen Kane's release because his cinematography drew too much attention to itself – the ideology of the time being that good photography was supposed to be “invisible”. He didn't win the Oscar that year – ironic, given that nowadays, flashy cinematography is the only type that can win. Hindsight, of course, is 20/20, and today it's almost too easy to praise Toland's work on the film, which stands far above its peers in terms of visual signature. Something that's less easy to do is to actually rank the brilliance of Citizen Kane's dozens of fascinating shots in a succinct top ten list. Here goes nothing:
