Venezia Verdi

Non-Linear Editing

Alex Bordino

Spring 2015

Citizen Kane has a rather unique structure. It is certainly non-linear, and consists of constant back-and-forth scenes between flashbacks and present-day. The movie begins with an interesting twist; the first few scenes consist of Kane on his deathbed and then his funeral, then flashes back to him as a young man and continues through several milestones he experienced over the years of his life. However, it is revealed moments later that those scenes are actually on a movie about Kane that other characters (in present day/‘real life’) are watching. Then, when one of the modern-day men begins to read Mr. Thatcher’s memoir in order to try to discover more information about Rosebud, the movie flashes back to each of the moments as the man reads about them. Contrary to a linear film that may have taken viewers straight through a chronological sequence of Kane’s life from childhood to death, Citizen Kane’s nonlinear structure still manages to portray all of the important events of Kane’s entire life to us, but does so as the information is presented to the modern-day/real life characters. For example, when they discover information about an experience Kane had, or they are listening to someone who knew Kane talk about his life, the movie shows us that information through a flashback and then cuts back to reality. As the characters gain information or observe it, so do we. This is another reason the movie is not chronological; the characters are gaining new information from different sources and about different periods of Kane’s life (and we in-turn receive this information out of sequence) and then they must paste together his life story and who he is, like a puzzle.