I’ve been depressed enough today, and my feeling is that you have probably been feeling like you can’t escape what has happened anywhere… Movie Theaters have closed down, Theme Parks, Television Shows and friggin BASEBALL…
I refuse to be held hostage by the insanity of a few, my job in life is to provide you with COOL NEWS, and on a day like this… so filled with dread and melancholy… I’ll be damned if I won’t provide you with something to look forward to, a moment’s distraction and a respite from the madness of the world we’ve been plunged into.
Yesterday, I received an advance copy of the CITIZEN KANE dvd… The upcoming super deluxe DVD set
I stayed up last night, till early this morning diving into this two disc set, pouring over the exquisite features… the fabulous commentaries by critic/director/Welles Biographer PETER BOGDANOVICH and a separate commentary by Roger Ebert. Both commentaries are sublimely perfect to give you new perspectives on CITIZEN KANE… With the Ebert commentary though, I really wish that they had instead filmed him giving his scene for scene analysis that he does from time to time at festivals and presentations. A couple of years back while boating through the Panama Canal, I watched Ebert and the audience of the Floating Film Festival disappear into CITIZEN KANE… Pointing out the significance and tricks of nearly every frame of the film. While that is not here, Ebert’s commentary is much like his DARK CITY commentary…. A film lover loving the film you are watching and articulately and with great skill guiding you through a film with an expert’s eyes and knowledge to illuminate you.
Meanwhile Bogdanovich’s commentary is equally great. Giving you an amazing look into Welles and William Randolph Hearst. Interestingly enough, Bogdanovich has just finished his own film on Hearst and the infamous Marion Davies/Charles Chaplin/Thomas Ince incident… called THE CAT’S MEOW!
In addition to these two great features, the dvd gives you a great 1941 Movie Premiere Newsreel… Probably one of the most joyous premieres ever given how close this film came to never being released or existing (even after being filmed). The Galleries of Storyboards, Photos, Alternate ad campaigns, correspondences, call sheets and other great stuff is just a treasure trove for the CITIZEN KANE junkie.
On the second disc is the two hour THE BATTLE OVER CITIZEN KANE documentary that PBS shot. Here you see glimpses of amazing footage from Welles’ beginnings… Like film footage of his first New York theater show, produced by the New Deal’s WPA, an all-black cast production of MACBETH… but done as VOODOO MACBETH… The footage is breathtaking… Startling beyond words and makes you dream of a time machine to take you back and watch this spectacle play out… In addition the stills from Welles’ Mercury Theatre stage production of JULIUS CEASAR as though it took place in Nazi Germany… Lit like the Nuremburg Marches… Looking at impossibly young images of John Houseman, Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles himself… Hearing how the first performance bombed, and how Welles added a new scene.. the death of a poet… and when they played it, the audience roared… stopping the play for 4-5 minutes at a time. The production was considered the greatest adaptation of Shakespeare ever made…
Listening to Welles himself talking about renting an Ambulance to whisk him from radio station to radio station to do voices for dozens upon dozens of characters.. showing up having never read the script, asking… What’s the character… and being told 80 year old Chinese man, and then on air… and he transformed that quickly.
In addition the piece profiles William Randolph Hearst’s rise to power with footage and images from the Spanish American War… The stories simply defining modern imagination.
This documentary is soooooooooo much better than RKO 281 that it isn’t even funny… Watching Welles say that "I should have left film after CITIZEN KANE, but I was like a husband who stays with his wife through an illness, But I love her" AMAZING!!!
And then finally there is the film itself… CITIZEN KANE is simply one of the greatest films of all time. The first time I ever saw it was at the age of 21, I’d seen pieces before, but never sat down and watched it. That first time I was on a beachfront motel, out the window of which upon that magnificent hill was SAN SIMEON. I rented the film from the Motel’s video selection… and Dad and I watched it together… He’d seen it innumerable times, and said I had seen it perhaps 15 times as a small child at various film parties… but here… in the shadow of the Ranch, watching Xanadu behind that gothic Gate with the ominous ‘K’… The perfect film experience.
Since then, I’ve watched Kane perhaps 3 to 4 times a year… Why? Because I feel it continues to get even better with each viewing. You pick up on so much, noticing details you never caught before. And watching the film last night from 5am to 7am… I didn’t do so much as a long blink…. And I watched it 3 times last night… Once with Bogdanovich’s commentary, once with Ebert’s… and once with my own thoughts… That’s the power of the film to captivate.
What makes CITIZEN KANE the film that so many herald as being the greatest in film history? Well… Quite simply… From the structure that the story is told from… the passion in every character… the wit and sharpness of the script… the absolutely brilliant cinematography…. The score, dear God the score is something that time shall never erase… Herrmann will live eternally for this, PSYCHO and NORTH BY NORTHWEST! Then there’s Robert Wise’s astounding editing.
There is simply no weak links… Not only is the story delivered to perfection, but the style, look and motion of that story is in such a breathlessly brilliant series of innovative techniques that every film that came since it, was affected…. Be it the use of overlapping dialogue, the non-linear story-telling, the composition of the frame…
But more than anything, Kane tells a story of a man driven by passions and excess that could have done it all and lived happily and justly… but had to push harder and harder… Never accepting people for who they are, but wanting to transform them into that which he saw them as..
Whether you’ve seen the film a hundred times, or have never gotten around to it… This DVD is an absolute must own now. Discover one of the greatest films ever made in a brilliant transfer and superb presentation! This is coming out in two weeks, so look for it… It’s so worth it!
