Yet almost no American critics of the time spotted this trend. Welles’s technical innovations were well covered in the press, and most reviews of Kane mentioned what Gregg Toland had done, but reviewers didn’t seem to notice other filmmakers’ take-up of the style throughout the decade. Even Farber’s New Republic pieces refer to depth staging in the oblique ways I’ve just mentioned, and he doesn’t go into lens length, film stocks, lighting, and other matters that were widely discussed in the technical journals of the day.
