It’s here, perhaps the landmark American film, and one of only perhaps three films whose absence from DVD has attained near-legendary status. And it was worth the wait.

Film Synopsis: Is there anybody who doesn’t know the story of Citizen Kane? Fading in on an ominous nighttime exterior, the camera slowly focuses on a high wrought-iron fence filigreed with the initial "K." Beyond spreads Xanadu, the vast estate of one of the world's wealthiest men. The camera surveys the grounds -- empty gondolas swaying on a private lake, exotic animals penned in a private zoo, manicured lawns and shubbery -- all shrouded in fog. Towering above the mist is the top of a man-made mountain on which sits a castle, a single light shining from it. Within is a dying man who clutches a crystal ball enclosing a winter scene and make-believe snow. He utters one word, "Rosebud," and dies, dropping the ball, which breaks into tiny shards. The film is a cinematic jigsaw puzzle, as the viewer attempts to piece together the life of Charles Foster, Rashoman-like, from anecdotes and flashbacks of the characters that surrounded him. Every frame of Gregg Toland's astonishing deep-focus photography helped broaden cinematic language; the film is so perfect that Welles had nowhere to go but down, and Citizen Kane marked both his arrival and his damnation.

Technical

Video:	Original Academy ratio 1.33:1
Audio:	ENGLISH: Dolby Digital Mono [CC] ENGLISH: Commentary by Peter Bogdanovich ENGLISH: Commentary by Roger Ebert
Subtitles:	French, Portuguese, Spanish

The DVD is greatly improved over the best existing archive presentation of this film, the 1984 Criterion laserdisc. The flickering of image brightness has been minimized to invisibility, but without the unnatural static feel seen in other “restored” period films such as Snow White; we noticed no dirt and scratches other than those deliberately placed as part of the News On The March newsreel-within-the-film.

Compared to the previous laserdisc releases, the image is framed more accurately, gaining image on the top, bottom, and left sides. The steadiness and clarity of the picture is so improved that the DVD is a must-have for film students and fans of cinema. We’d never noticed before, for instance, that in the early shot of Kane holding the snowglobe, the globe is clearly attached to a stand that runs invisibly down between Kane’s/Welles’ fingers; the globe is rock-steady in the frame while his hand shakes slightly under it.

The sound is noted on the DVD case as being “revitalized digital audio from the highest-quality surviving elements” (hyperbole that would have made Kane himself proud); while improved over previous transfers of the film, it still has the midrange-heavy distancing quality that one expects from a prewar film. While the mono track by definition disallows a wide soundscape, the sound is probably as good as it can be. We mention it only as a warning to those who read the case and expect a soundscape comparable to Star Wars.

There is at least one Easter egg; on the supplementary Features menu of Disc 1, jog the joystick until the sled is illuminated.

Supplements

• Audio Commentary by moviemaker and Welles biographer Peter Bogdanovich
• Audio Commentary by film critic Roger Ebert
• Trailer
• Production Stills
• Storyboards
• Alternate ad campaigns
• Studio and personal correspondence
• Call sheets and other memorabilia
• Introduction by Peter Bogdanovich
• 1941 movie premiere newreel
• Production Info
• Welles and Hearst Biographies
• 2^nd Disc: "The Battle Over Citizen Kane" (1996, 120 min.)

Of the two documentaries, Ebert’s is by far the better. The denseness of information and research that it displays is equal in quality to the best of the old Criterion commentaries, and is one of the rare audio commentaries that bears repeating. By contast, however, Bogdanovich’s talk is amateurish – something surprising, given his background as a Welles biographer. As an example, during the famous opening sequence – nighttime scenes of a decrepit Xanadu as the camera fades closer to a single lit window – Bogdanovich seems to miss completely the change in viewpoint as the light blinks out. When the illumination fades back in again, we are inside the room (a trick Toland used several times); Bogdanovich, doing little more than describing what we are seeing, notes only that the light went out, then went back on again.

The second disc contains the 1996 WGBH documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane, previously released as a standalone DVD in January of this past year. The transfer appears to be identical to the previous release, and the disc retains the older catalog number. The two-hour documentary is an invaluable supplement to the film, and as a bonus includes rare footage of the Mercury Theater performing their infamous War Of the Worlds radio broadcast. While in recent years it has become easy to be confounded and amused to think that the broadcast actually sent large numbers of people on the Eastern seaboard into a panic, perhaps it is somewhat less so today. At the time of the broadcast the storm clouds of war were already roiling over Europe, and people turning on the radio to hear sirens and screams – people whose nerves were already on edge over current events – could easily mistake the broadcast for the embodiment of their fears. Had the same broadcast been replayed on the radio on the nights following this September 11^th, it’s likely that the results would have been the same.