The folowing essay is a comparison of the films Citizen Kane (1941) dircted by Orson Welles and Josef Von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress. (1934) Specifically it will concentrate on how the two directors use set design, framing and lighting to comment upon the psychology of their principle characters. Welles' Citizen Kane tells the story of an aging press tycoon and would-be politician Charles Foster Kane. A man whose arrogance alienates him from everyone who loves him, leaving him to die alone inside the vast Gothic castle of a home that he builds for himself in Florida. The film is highly regarded for its filming techniques, including aspects of set design, framing an