Briefly explain how Welles used the crane shot to add thematic layers to the film

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: The ideal answer should include:
1. No one has used crane shots so spectacularly as Welles. But once again, the virtuosity
is rarely indulged in for its own sake.
2. The bravura crane shots embody important symbolic ideas.
3. For example, after learning of Kane’s death, a reporter attempts to interview Susan. The sequence begins in a torrential rainstorm. We see a poster and picture of Susan, advertising her engagement as a singer in a nightclub.
4. As the soundtrack shudders with a rumble of thunder, the camera cranes up, up through the rain, up to the roof of the building, then plunges through a garish neon sign, “El Rancho,” descends to the skylight where a blinding flash of lightning masks the camera’s passage through the window itself, and sweeps down to the deserted nightclub, where Susan is hunched at a table in a drunken stupor, prostrate with grief.
5. Both the camera and the reporter encounter numerous obstacles—the rain, the sign, the very walls of the building must be penetrated before we can even see Susan, much less hear her speak. The crane shot embodies a brutal invasion of privacy, a disregard for the barriers Susan has placed around her in her misery.