Mulvey

I really thought that Mulvey’s writing was very insightful and I enjoyed reading it more than Carringers. I thought it was interesting bow Mulvey talked about the musical motifs that were used throughout Citizen Kane. This is something that I noticed while watching the movie but didn’t really think too much about it. I thought it was so interesting that these motifs were supposed to represent Kane’s power and personality, because it is something that resonates implicitly with the audience but I think its also a very unconscious understanding. She states “Bernard Hermann wrote about the necessity for musical leitmotivs in Citizen Kane. There are two main motifs. One- a simple four-note figure in brass- is that of Kane’s power. It is given out in the first two bar scenes of the film. The second motif is that of ‘Rosebud’; heard as a solo on the vibraphone, it first appears during the death scene at the very beginning of the picture. It is heard again and again throughout the film under various guises, and if followed closely, is a clue to the ultimate identity of the ‘Rosebud’ itself” (18).

Mulvey also talks a lot about psychoanalytic theory and feminism and how it was a main influence on her analysis of the film. She speaks a lot about how the film used unconventional approaches that challenged the viewer to think in a different way and causes the viewer to “construct a language of cinema that meshes with the language of the psyche” (16). I am not sure exactly what the full implications of this statement are and I look forward to discussing it further in class.