THE FILM
Following his radio work (including his panic inducing broadcast/adaptation of War of the Worlds), Orson Welles was approached by RKO Pictures to bring his talents to Hollywood. He was given creative carte blanche...as long as he obeyed the constraints of his budget. Fittingly, he called the RKO backlot "the best train set a boy could want" and he spent weeks with cinematographer Gregg Toland shooting tests (he called them tests to keep the studio from interfering but the work was later integrated) for a film then titled "The American." The film, based off a script written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz was loosely based off the life of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of the early 20th century.
The film begins with the death of the film's mogul, Charles Foster Kane (Welles). We are given an overview of his life in a short newsreel, which provides an overall guide to the splintered narrative Welles and Mankiewicz provide us within Kane itself. We learn how the lower class Kane came to be rich (inheritance from a gold mine) and how the money and the power gave him a newspaper which went from preaching his own brand of socialism to absolute tyranny. We learn that he had two wives, was twice divorced, longed for a political career that never came to fruition, and muttered one of the most remembered lines in cinema on his deathbed:
"Rosebud."
The newsreel fades up and we become witnesses to an editorial meeting at the company behind "News on the March." The editors are displeased with the newsreel and send a journalist (William Alland) out to interview all the people associated with Kane to find out the meaning behind his dying word. Alland begins with Kane's second wife, the failed opera singer Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore) before visiting Kane's business manager Bernstein (Everett Sloane) and his best friend, Led Leland (Joseph Cotten). The journalist discovers Kane's progression from idealist to a businessman who has become sick with his own power but he does not find out the meaning behind "Rosebud."
Just because the journalist is incapable of solving the mystery of "Rosebud" does not mean that Welles refuses to provide us, the viewer, with the solution to the riddle. While the object it correlates to seems inconsequential - a sled - it is the connotative meaning behind it that really matters. Kane, like Jay Gatsby, was a rich man who lost something that meant a lot to him. In Gatsby's case, it was a woman while in Kane's case it was his childhood. Sent away to live and be raised by the businessman Walter Thatcher (George Coulouris), Kane was swept away from his loving mother (Agnes Moorehead) and an abusive father (Harry Shannon), trading the cold winters of Colorado for the cold hand of Thatcher. Kane initially uses his power to strike back at Thatcher before he realizes its potential. Thus, he forgets about regaining his childhood for the majority of his life - although he is derailed from visiting a warehouse where his things are kept by Susan Alexander and a muddy coat - only coming to again realize his loss once he has completely hit bottom.
The magic of Kane can fill books. The deep focus photography by Gregg Toland, the disordered narrative that nevertheless makes sense due to the script's structure and to Robert Wise's slick editing, the cutting dialogue, and the wonderful performances. What touches me every time I watch Kane is how deep of a character he is and how tragic his fall from grace truly is. The technical achievements of the film would mean nothing without the script and performances. The work hand in hand, perfectly in sync, breaking the rules while charting a new path; that's why Kane is the best film ever made.
THE AUDIO/VIDEO
I was initially ambivalent about buying Kane on Blu-Ray, despite loving the film with every fiber of my being. In my opinion, the format works really well for large scale films including action packed epics (The Lord of the Rings) and Technicolor Vistavision (The Searchers). My philosophy of double-dipping on an upgrade from DVD to Blu-Ray is usually for the films that best warrant it (Stanley Kubrick movies are my favorite)...not for black and white 1.33:1 films. Yet, the HD transfer of Kane embodies an technical aspect I tend to overlook: film grain and film contrast. The black and white high contrast look of Kane looked good but overly polished on DVD, the Blu-Ray release makes those blacks even inkier and deeper, giving more nuance to Toland's lighting than DVD is physically capable of.
The audio is harder to gauge. I'm sure it's an improvement, but mono sound is mono sound. The main attraction here is the improved picture.
THE EXTRAS
The overall package is very nicely produced. It contains reprints of memos, receipts, a booklet from the film's premiere, and a hardbound book with a short essay on the film's relevance. Also included in the set are DVD copies of the documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996) and the film adaptation of the documentary, RKO 281 (1999). The extras, aside from the packaging and RKO 281, are standard definition ports from the old DVD release. We get the energetic commentary track by Roger Ebert, a commentary by Bogdanovich that's informative but a bit dry, a few interviews, some production stills, and a brief glimpse at a scene that was left out due to the Production Code. It's all fine and good but Warner Brothers really could have stepped it up a bit. It's Citizen Kane after all and simply providing us with the same bonus features and an amazing transfer makes the $50 price tag a little hard to swallow. I wish they had at least given us HD transfers of the extras, including the two supplemental films.
In my opinion, the best special feature of this edition can only be found via Amazon.com's exclusive: the long-awaited DVD release of Welles's follow up, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Granted, the DVD is featureless and it's also not a Blu-Ray. However, given that Ambersons has only been available on VHS in the United States and a crappy PAL transfer, this is a huge bonus. Overall, Kane is worthy of the double-dip for the new transfer and Ambersons alone...although the package is far from definitive.
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