Drew McElligott asks: " On the topic of NON DIEGETIC IMAGES- I've always wondered if the white parrot in Citizen Kane is diegetic or non-diegetic. It appears around the time when Susan is leaving Kane and Xanadu. The bird really comes out of nowhere and knowing that Orson Welles generally hates the use of symbols in his films, it's been a mystery to me why he threw that in - my only guess is that the bird's terrible squaking would wake any audience up.BUt the question remains, is this a diegetic image or no?" This is an interestingly ambiguous question. The bird (a cockatiel or cockatoo, actually) was indeed put in partly to startle the audience (a la Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony) and as a variation on all those thunderclaps and loud Herrmann chords that also announce scene changes. But look at the bird--and you can see through its eye! This was apparently due to a printing error. Now the bird itself is not unusual to think of as resident at Xanadu (sub- tropical location and home of the "world's largest private zoo"), but the image is arresting, ambiguous--and so quick on the screen that after it startles, it remains disconcerting. BTW, look at THE THIRD MAN for another encounter with a similar bird! Speaking of CITIZEN KANE, there's also a nice, but very subtle, example of background sound obscuring dialogue in one scene. After Boss Gettys tries to blackmail Kane into withdrawing from the election, Kane pursues him down the stairs, screaming, "I'm going to send you to SING-SING, Gettys! SING-SING! SING- " (and the last syllable is replaced by the beep of a car horn as Gettys closes the front door behind him on the way out). Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN) ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]