Early in the film there is a scene where Walter Thatcher has come to Colorado to take the young Kane away with him. In one of the shots Mrs Kane sits reading the terms of her son's inheritance in the foreground and at the right of the frame. Thatcher is seated slightly behind and to the right of her, and Kane's father stands at the left of the frame in the middle distance. By their position and size the three figures appear to be visually and dramatically at the centre of the scene. Initially their relative sizes on the screen seem to indicate their relative narrative importance: Mrs Kane, the mother who is trying to do the best for her son, is the dominant personality; Thatcher is the interloper; and the elder Kane, ineffectively voicing his opposition, is a figure of weakness. After looking through the foreground diagonally to the middle distance, attention centres on a window at the very back of the room. Through it can barely ve identified the figure of a young boy who is all but obliterated by falling snow.

The boy may at first appear to be the least important figure in the composition, but the opposite is true. Much greater dramatic coherence is given to the scene when it is scanned in reverse order, from background to foreground. The smallest figure becomes the local point of the narrative - it is Kane's future his parents and Thatcher are discussing, his life that, from that point onwards, will be irrevocably changed.

Time and again in the film secondary figures are positioned to act as a frame within the film frame in order to concentrate the spectator's attention on Kane in the distance. But a point occurs during the political rally sequence where, although a similar framing technique is used, the dramatic effect is suddenly reversed. Kane is giving the supreme performance of his career: his magnificient rhetoric about protecting working men, slum children and ordinary citizens alike captivates the audience. The scene ends, however, with a shot that dispels this effect and signals the beginning of the end for Kane. Political boss Jim Gettys is seen standing high up in a balcony, his figure filling the right side of the frame. To the left and far below, Kane is finishing his speech to wild applause. But the exaggerated perspective and the disproportionate size of Gettys foreshadows the despairing events about to befall Kane

Up to this point in the film Kane is depicted as being in control of space on the screen. The spectator's attention, manipulated by the expressive dynamics of the composition and lighting, is unerringly drawn to him. But from the time he loses the election to the end of the film, his presence is made to seem increasingly insignificant in relation to his surroundings. This is most noticeable in the concluding scenes of Kane and Susan's self-imposed exile in Xanadu where Kane appears dwarfed by the volume of the rooms and the sheer depth of the huge, gaping fireplace. Space in the cavernous mausoleum of Xanadu now controls Kane and isolates him in a void of darkness.