text: citizen kane? i have to write a paper about it. what was the intention of this film? please any help would be great! some technical elements:  1) use of deep focus - deep focus allowed the camera to see the background as sharply as the foreground. welles made good use of this.   for example, in the scene where susan tries to kill herself. welles implies to us what she did in just one shot, because you can see the medicine bottle in the foreground, susan lying down in the "mid-ground", and the locked door in the background; this all implies that she tried to kill herself. if welles didn't use deep focus, such a shot (and such economy of shots) would be impossible.  2) jump cuts - you can see this in the scene where kane says "merry christmas" to thatcher, then it cuts to a scene many years later, where thatcher says "and a happy new year".  welles used jump cuts creatively in this film, such as the example above. it is a joy to see how freshly he uses jump cuts (and other techniques) in this film, even though the movie is decades old.  some symbolism:  1) when came walks past the hall of mirrors, i think the image shows us how many faces kane had in his life, and which one is the real kane? who knows?   2) when the smoke rises to the sky during the last shots of the movie, i think the shot is saying to us "look... kane had so much possessions in his life... but so what? all of it is fleeting just like that smoke".