Probably the most unfortunate thing that ever happened to `Citizen Kane' was that it found itself atop the AFI top film list. Now, no one can simply enjoy the film. Everyone feels compelled to scrutinize it and make a decision about its greatness. Asking whether `Citizen Kane' is the best film of the century is like asking if Marilyn Monroe was the most beautiful woman. It depends on whom you ask.`Citizen Kane' is not the most entertaining film I've ever seen, but it is certainly one of the most important. It is a vanguard motion picture and a gargantuan achievement for Orson Welles. If you consider the fact that Welles was a 24 year old Hollywood outsider who had only done radio and theater when he landed the contract for this film, you begin to appreciate what a big deal it was. This was during a time when a few studios controlled every film that was made. How many 24 year old actor/directors can you name today, even in a world where independents abound?
The story is based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. Writer Herman Mankiewicz had an up-close look at Hearst as he had been an occasional house guest at the Hearst mansion. The similarities were striking, right down to the paramour whose career Hearst promoted, who loved to do jigsaw puzzles. The fact that this film was released at all is a marvel in itself. Hearst went on a personal campaign to crush the film and enlisted every powerful friend he had to stop it. Louis B. Mayer offered RKO $800,000 to destroy the print. John D. Rockefeller ordered the Radio City premier cancelled. All of Hearst's newspapers were forbidden to mention the film.
Hollywood was uniformly against it and Welles was branded an insolent maverick. The film was snubbed by the Academy. It was nominated for 9 Oscars and won only best screenplay. The film turned out to be a commercial failure, losing $150,000. With all the forces stacked against it, we are lucky to be having this best film debate at all.
The story has a simple moral; that money and power can't buy happiness. We see Kane's progress from a happy child, to an idealistic young journalist intent on helping the common man, and finally to a bitter and angry old man whose innocence has slipped from him. One of the most effective scenes that illustrated this was the two minute overlay of breakfast conversations with his wife. It starts with cooing lovers and progresses through increasing levels of discord. It ends in silence with the two reading separate newspapers, her disdain for him subtly indicated by her choice of the hated Chronicle as her newspaper.
What is so remarkable about this film is the filmmaking. Director after director has pointed to some aspect of this film as having influenced them. The use of shadows and various perspective shots was not unprecedented in 1941, but never before had they been used with so much dramatic impact. What was unprecedented was that `Citizen Kane' was the first film ever to depart from the strict narrative format, which moves forward chronologically. The film starts at the end and jumps around in time based upon the perspective of the person who is telling his or her story about Kane. So the next time you see a flashback, remember it started here.
The makeup was revolutionary. Welles often went through four hours or more of makeup to be properly aged for each scene. The film also launched a number of brilliant careers. Besides Welles, Joseph Cotton and Agnes Moorehead went on to long and prominent film careers.
If `Citizen Kane' is not the best film of the century it is certainly one of them. Its influence on a generation of filmmakers cannot be ignored in the equation. People who watch this film and ask, "What's the big deal?" are comparing it with modern films that have borrowed from this film's techniques and undergone 60 years of evolution. It's like going back to Kitty Hawk and saying, "What's the big deal, the flight only lasted a few seconds."
There is only one rating to give to a film of such monumental importance. It is the consummate 10.
Better sound quality but arguably slightly better picture quality when compared to the upscaled standard disc and equal special features except for the better blu-ray book packaging makes it a tough call on whether or not to double dip. For me, I kinda regret doing it as the improvements do not "wow" me enough.
You will have to decide about "upgrading" but if you don't already have this film in any form, you might as well get this blu-ray. As for me, I wish I didn't as my Special Edition 2-disc Standard DVD release upscales well enough so much so that I don't feel ready to part with it the way I do with other blu-ray upgrades that I have done.
Buy Citizen Kane (70th Anniversary Blu-ray Book) (1941) Now
By all accounts this appears to be a wonderful reissue and collector's edition. However, one "little" problem remains. And it will remain forever. A clue to this problem is found in a comment from the product description:"Presented here in a magnificent 70th anniversary digital transfer with revitalized digital audio from the highest quality surviving elements ..."
What that means is the original negative of "Citizen Kane" was destroyed years ago. Lost forever by an RKO executive's mistake to slate the negative for silver reclamation, the "highest quality surviving elements" are basically cannibalized intermediate negatives of fair to poor quality. I know, because I was given the job of assembling the best possible negative to strike new prints from for the 50th anniversary theatrical release. In the 20 years since, there is a remote possibility that better elements have been found. However, I seriously doubt any cleaner elements were discovered since RKO provided me with every positive master and intermediate negative they could find in their library.
I did the best job I could given the circumstances and I was able to deliver a decent negative to strike new prints from. Still, one segment of the negative proved impossible to fix. Near the end of one reel, permanent emulsion scratches appear for several seconds. They are thick and white and impossible to miss. At the time, there was no replacement footage available.
I am eagerly awaiting the release of this new edition to check and see if others were able to fix what I could not and to see if some how, some way, better "quality" elements were found in the interim. When I have a chance to screen this edition I will report back on what I see.
However, know this: No new print or DVD will ever be struck from the original negative.
Read Best Reviews of Citizen Kane (70th Anniversary Blu-ray Book) (1941) Here
Add five stars for the quality of the two films, take one star away for the failure to do either of them justice. More could and should have been done in the case of both films. In fact, in the past, more HAS been done:ABOUT CITIZEN KANE:
In 1984, The Criterion Collection issued their first title ever, a CAV laserdisc of Citizen Kane, spread out over five disc sides (spine number CC101). It was wondrous, because it allowed full-frame access (30 frames per second) to the montage-work in the film. Never before seen, there were extras--a visual essay of over 100 production photos, plus the theatrical trailer! The back jacket named the people who made this release possible--Film Negative Transfer by Alexander Lobel and Ronald Haver; premastering at Devlin Productions, manufactured by 3M in St Paul, Minnesota. Video Review published the critique: "has opened a door to a kind of movie viewing that has never been accessible to consumers before."
Seven years later, in 1991, on the 50th anniversary of the film's premiere, Criterion reissued the title, again as a CAV laserdisc (spine number 147), adding two more extras -an interactive documentary with 35 leading film figures, and the early Welles film "Hearts of Age." The film was entirely retransferred, using newer technology that had become available. The jacket credits Maria Groumbos and Gregg Garvin for the film-to-video transfer this time. The transfer results are much improved over the first laserdisc.
Ten years after that, in 2001, on the 60th anniversary of the premiere, Warner released the two-disc Special Edition DVD, with loads of extras, including two excellent full-length audio commentaries, by Roger Ebert and Peter Bogdanovich, and the film "The Battle over Citizen Kane" on a second disc. There are no transfer credits listed, but clearly a lot of love was put into the transfer from the original film elements. This is one of the better DVD releases of all time.
Now, ten years after that, in 2011, on the 70th anniversary of the film, we have the Blu-Ray. Everything is the same as the Special Edition DVD except the following add-ons: a souvenir book, a collection of miniature posters, and a third disc containing the film "RKO 281," all contained in a very lovely box with "CITIZEN KANE" in big white letters on a black background. Again there are no transfer credits for "Citizen Kane" but the blu-ray seems to use the same digital master as the DVD. Oh, there has been alteration of that master, in the darkening of the whole film which is obvious from the first frame. The "No Trespassing" signs that bookend the entire film are much darker overall than on the DVD. There is excessive DNR employed in that stage of remastering, because the fog that drifts back and forth over the matte paintings in the opening sequences is mottled, clearly confusing the computer that was entrusted with the task of reducing video noise. There are a lot of faces in the foreground of this movie, usually as the commentators point out being an observer in the right foreground of the screen. On the DVD the left face of that observer looks like a normal face, but on the bluy-ray there is the appearance of sand-paper. That is a frequent artifact of black-and-white films released on blu-ray. As a result of these things, the 1991 DVD is still preferable viewing for me.
So how can we assess thirty years of Citizen Kane on home video? The years 1984, 1991 and 2001 were great steps forward in bringing us into the presence of the film as such, and in each of those cases there was a return to the mother lode, the original film negative, to make a transfer using the best methods available at the time. The year 2011 has not been a great step forward. One suspects that there was no return to the mother lode, and that the remastering process was entrusted to a computer chip. Perhaps ten years from now, for the 80th anniversary, the film will reappear, on the head of a pin or whatever the greatest technology since baked bread will be at that time.
ABOUT MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS
In 1986 The Criterion Collection released a CAV laserdisc of Magnificent Ambersons (spine number 9), loaded with extras including storyboards, reconstruction of Welles' original ending, the radio play version of 1939, surviving fragments from the lost silent film version of 1925, and an audio commentary by Robert Carringer, who also produced the disc together with Robert Stein. Film-Negative to Tape Transfer is credited on the jacket to Alex Lobel. Video Review awarded this the prize for "Best Interactive Disc" of 1986. This was widely regarded as one of the best laserdiscs ever produced. Mysteriously, the film never appeared on DVD until now, attached modestly to the side of the blu-ray box of Citizen Kane in the Amazon exclusive. The DVD advertises itself as "newly remastered" but what could that possibly mean when the picture quality is identical to that on the laserdisc of 25 years ago? Was the laserdisc picture so good that it can't be bettered? In any event, there are no extras at all to the DVD, no commentary, no anything. If one would like something tangential, a good buy would be the DVD "It's All True," a nice film about Welles in South America at the time Ambersons was being edited without him. While Ambersons is a welcome addition to the DVD inventory, the no-frills DVD cannot hold a candle to the magnificence of the laserdisc. No one owning the laserdisc would have any reason to consider the DVD an upgrade.
Again, add five stars for the quality of the two films, take one star away for the failure to do them justice.
Want Citizen Kane (70th Anniversary Blu-ray Book) (1941) Discount?
This isn't my personal favorite film, but I certainly understand why many people revere it as the greatest. There's no denying the expressive way it uses the resources of the medium, the great power of the tragic story (which penetrates deeply into both human nature and American civilization), and the film's tremendous influence on other directors. As an example of the last point, think of how Lawrence of Arabia is structured: it begins with the protagonist's death, then jumps to a reporter trying to reconstruct the great but flawed man's story, and finally works its way at the end back to the man's death. Sound familiar? Yes, there are good reasons why professional directors and critics have voted this the greatest film, not only in the AFI poll, but also in the international Sight & Sound poll in 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992, 2002 . . .
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