10 Most Imaginative Shots On Film

3. Deep Focus - Citizen Kane

Orson Welles' masterful drama continues to be hailed as one of the greatest films of all time over 75 years later, and with damn good reason.

In addition to its splendid direction, emotionally resonant script and top-notch performances, it's fondly remembered for Gregg Toland's boundary-pushing cinematography, with particular regard to his revolutionary use of deep focus techniques.

Almost every scene in the film sees both the foreground and background captured in the same, sharp level of focus, with the most memorable use of deep focus occurring during the scene where Thatcher (George Coulouris ) agrees to be a young Kane's guardian.

While the conversation between the adults is taking place in the foreground, we can see a young Kane playing in the snow outside the window, and as is uncharacteristic for film, both the background and foreground planes are in crisp focus.

As a technically dazzling work of pitch-perfect framing that further confesses the movie's primary theme of lost childhood, it's utterly remarkable and has lost virtually none of its lustre over the decades.

That Toland didn't win the Best Cinematography Oscar is, frankly, shocking (instead going to Arthur Miller for How Green Was My Valley).