CITIZEN KANE: 4K UHD Blu-ray (RKO, 1941) Criterion Collection
'It's terrific!' publicity for
Orson Welles' Citizen Kane touted in 1941 - a rather fitting
declaration, since the word 'terrific' actually means something that is at once
awe-inspiring and strangely unsettling. Welles' movie is certainly both. Just
as Gone With The Wind (1939) had bench-marked the height of 1930’s
melodrama, and has since remained David O. Selznick's uncompromisingly lush
vision of that ancient Hollywood glamor, Welles' Citizen Kane, debuting
only a scant 2 years later, became the epitome of the new decade's darker and
more darkly purposed visions of the human condition – and, one human in
particular – newspaper magnet, William Randolph Hearst, who didn’t much
appreciate being publicly outed by Hollywood’s enfant terrible. Welles was just
twenty-three when he enthusiastically accepted the daunting task of rescuing
RKO Pictures from its steep financial decline. Welles, who had previously terrorized
audiences with his realistic radio broadcast of an alien invasion – War of the
Worlds – now found a new medium at his complete disposal, the gates thrown open
and told to make whatever movie he wanted without compromises or interruptions
from the front offices. For anyone else, the offer would have yielded a
complete implosion of that heady responsibility. But Welles was telescopically
focused in his pursuit of excellence, though regrettably, about to meet his
match (or perhaps his alter ego) in Hearst’s aging newspaper mogul.
Citizen Kane is oft’
mis-perceived as a literal film a clef of Hearst and his relationship with MGM
starlet, Marion Davies. In actuality Welles' movie is a scathing,
semi-autobiographical amalgam of incidents, some borrowed from Hearst's life
that seek to show how a great man is reduced to nothingness by his own
ambition. In this respect, Citizen Kane foreshadows the demise of Welles
own reputation in Hollywood, although in 1941 no one - least of all Welles -
could have foreseen it. As scripted by Herman J. Mankiewicz (a fairly bitter,
though brilliant screenwriter) and Welles, the story’s nonlinear narrative
charts the life of one, Charles Foster Kane (Welles); a child, torn from his
mother, who thereafter embarks upon a life of deliberate self-destruction under
the auspices of his miserly legal guardian, William Parks Thatcher (George
Coulouris). In his twenties, Kane takes over a beleaguered newspaper - The
Enquirer - with the aid of his best friend, Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten)
and Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane - who shaved his head for the role). Over the
course of the next decade, Kane will grow the paper into a publishing empire.
But the trajectory of Kane's political trajectory is sabotaged twice – first,
to his advantage with Kane’s loveless engagement to the President's niece,
Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warrick), the second, by his affair with chorus girl,
Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore) whom Kane desires to transform into a great
opera diva, but is instead exposed for its baser ardor – to merely have gone
slumming when a marriage turns sour – by political adversary, Jim W. Gettys
(Ray Collins).
The rest of the film is dedicated
to a rather depressing illustration of Kane's feverish desire to reclaim the vigor
and vitality of this former life, and the folly in that misguided endeavor; his
desperate attempts at faux respectability, ultimately to unravel his ambitions
while making everyone in his life – including Kane – bitterly miserable. In the
end, no one is served by Kane’s ambitions – not even Kane himself. Publicly
disgraced, socially humiliated, Kane embarks upon the almost Svengali-like
transformation of Susan's career from chorine to aspiring opera diva. But this
possessive pursuit leads only to Susan’s own destruction, attempted suicide,
and finally, a grotesque rift in their marriage, leaving Kane a recluse,
hermetically walled inside his decaying pleasure palace, Xanadu. When Kane
finally dies, his derelict mausoleum of grand possessions is reduced to a
garage sale and a bonfire, the march of time crushing the last tangible
vestiges of all that his life amounted - or lacked thereof. Citizen Kane's
finale is at once self-reflexive and very Shakespearean - "a tale told
by an idiot full of sound and fury...signifying nothing". Kane has
failed in his attempts at immortality. He has become a forgotten relic in his
own time.
It’s easy to see why Hearst found
the picture transparently offensive and did everything in his power to derail
its release and success. Hearst’s own failed ambitions for political office and
his cloistered affair with Marion Davies are superficially mirrored in Citizen
Kane. Arguably, the picture is unnecessarily cruel to Davies – an actress
who possessed a good deal of talent (unlike her cinematic counterpart) and who,
in life, was not to suffer from her involvement with Hearst as to live rather resplendently
in the magnificent San Simeon castle built for the couple’s ultimate pleasure when
entertaining guests. In Kane, the never-to-be-completed artifice begun
for Susan is a cavernous, but solemn wasteland of half-unpacked, elegant junk
culled from the great storehouses of Europe – all that money, lacking in good
taste, could buy. As anyone who has been to San Simeon can attest, Hearst’s
opulent home is nothing less spectacular than a glittering hilltop oasis, in
its prime, to host some fairly opulent soirees for Hollywood’s hoi poloi. While critics raved about Welles’ non-linear
approach to storytelling and the potency of the picture’s dark philosophical
outlook on a ‘great’ man reduced to rubble by his own ego, Hearst became
determined to ruin Welles professionally by boycotting the movie, and later,
offering RKO obscene amounts of money to burn every last negative in existence.
Mercifully, RKO merely shelved Kane for decades yet to come – in effect,
archiving Welles’ genius for future generations to unearth like buried treasure
and rediscover.
Hearst’s final years were hardly
his best. After incurring epic financial losses at the outset of the 1930’s, the
company rebounded to profitability in WWII, thanks mostly to skyrocketing advertising
revenues. Hearst returned to San Simeon full-time in 1945, continuing to build
and morph the estate into its present state, donating many acquisitions to the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Two years later, Hearst left his beloved
castle for the last time. In ailing health, he sought the best medical care,
dying in Beverly Hills in 1951 – age, 88. To his life-long lover, Hearst
bequeathed 170,000 shares in the Hearst Corporation, plus a trust fund of
30,000 shares briefly giving Marion Davies controlling interest in his company.
Orson Welles would outlive Hearst by 34
years. But by 1951, the damage to Welles’ reputation in Hollywood was
irreversible. While RKO allowed him to pursue one more ‘dream’ project – The
Magnificent Ambersons (1942), in the penultimate stages of its completion,
the studio removed Welles, presumably, on assignment to shoot a documentary for
them, but actually to hand control over Ambersons’ editing and a
re-shoot of its finale, to a young, Robert Wise – doing irreparable damage to
Welles’ continuity in storytelling. Thereafter, Welles was promptly fired, but
allowed to remain in Hollywood as a freelancer for hire, appearing
intermittently thereafter in films of varying degrees of quality, and, over the
next several decades, to repeatedly attempt a return to the director’s chair.
Time has been more than kind to Citizen
Kane - rightfully resurrected to prominence on home video, its stark deep
focus cinematography by Greg Toland largely contributing to our enduring
appreciation of the film’s visual style. Yet, even as the world has caught up
to its more apocalyptic narrative in Welles’ self-destructing man, Citizen
Kane remains a darkly haunted and fairly disturbing glimpse into absolute
power and its sway over a soulless man, devoured by his own ambition. Far from
a parable, Kane illustrates – perhaps more deftly than any other movie
of its time - the real/reel demons to be feared in prideful men, driven to thrash
their souls and reputations in their never-quenchable desire for fortune and
glory. Let us address the elephant in the room - Orson Welles was a genius –
period. His cinematic dexterity both in front of and behind the camera was
staggering and so far beyond what was being done at the time. Before our eyes, Welles
ages some forty years from an ego-centric entrepreneur into the very shell of
that great man his character once hoped to become. Behind the scenes, Welles was
ever more the supreme puppet master, plucking all the creative strings in
unison to create his singular vision. That Citizen Kane is as perfect a
movie as one might wish it to be is not only a minor miracle but a major coup
from this ‘boy wonder’ who quickly found himself on the outside looking in on
his own Hollywood career. In hindsight, this was the beginning of the end for
Orson Welles – director. Although Welles became an instantly recognizable face
in front of the camera, often appearing in less than grand film fare for lesser
directors to keep his expense accounts in check, as an artist and creative
genius he arguably would never again know the likes of such storytelling.
Criterion Home Video debuts Citizen
Kane in 4K in a collector’s set that is, at once admirable, and yet, not
altogether satisfying. Warner Home Video’s deluxe Blu-ray treatment from 2014
remains the benchmark in 1080p mastering. The 4K adds HDR/Dolby Vision to the
mix and a bit rate 4 times that of the Blu. The image here is, strangely not as
deep, if marginally more refined. Certain scenes appear extraordinarily nuanced
– our first glimpse of a young Charles Foster Kane (Buddy Swan) being taken
from his parents, Jim (Harry Shannon) and Mary (Agnes Moorehead) delineated by a
spectacular snowfall, or the moment when Mr. Bernstein avails March of Time
reporter, Jerry Thompson (William Alland) of Kane’s early years during a
hellacious thunder shower, the rain reflected on the glossy desk top, revealing
precisely the care in composition created by Toland’s magnificent camera
design. However, as Kane is a motion picture for which, regrettably, no
OCN exists, this UHD transfer is working backwards from elements not always up
to snuff. Dupes sport a rather rough grain structure, faithfully reproduced
herein, but jarring when compared to the second-generation elements used to
complete the rest of this archival preservation/restoration. Warner Bros. have
created a new 4K element from a nitrate fine grain. The texturing of the image
seems less ‘processed’ than the aforementioned Blu, though a bit too gritty in
spots for my tastes. The RKO logo, as example, which looked gorgeous on the
Blu, now appears careworn, pale and grit-heavy. The early screening room scene
is also ‘brighter’ than before, revealing actors faces that, on the Blu-ray
transfer had been deliberately obscured in keeping with Welles’ original intent.
Also, when Thompson makes his pilgrimage to the Thatcher Library in the hopes
of learning all he can from his archival research, the pages of the text have
been obscured by blown-out contrast. The DTS 2.0 mono is solid. This is a
dialogue-driven track and what’s here is more than competently rendered. On the
4K we get 3 audio commentaries – a new 2021 track from Welles’ scholars, James
Naremore and Jonathan Rosenbaum, plus 2 tracks laid in from 2002 for Kane’s
DVD release, the first, starring filmmaker/Welles’ confidant, Peter Bogdanovich,
the other, the late film critic, Roger Ebert. This package also contains a
remastered Blu-ray with the same commentaries. (More on the Blu, below).
A 3rd and 4th
disc house the rest of the extras – and they are formidable, to say the
least. For kick-starters, there’s The
Complete Citizen Kane (1991), a rarely 1 ½ hr. BBC documentary. It’s
dated, and the image quality here is rough, with tons of chroma bleeding and
other age-related garble to water down its effect. But the interviews here,
with many of the creatives still very much alive to comment on Welles’ genius
then, are invaluable. Criterion has also shelled out for roughly an hour-and-a-half
of new content – almost a half-hour video essay from their current darling - critic,
Farran Smith Nehme and 16-mins. from scholar, Racquel J. Gates, plus 14-mins.
with scholar, Robert Carringer and another ‘almost’ half-hour with effects
experts, Craig Barron and Ben Burtt. To this mix has been added 25-mins. of vintage
interviews with Robert Wise, co-star, Ruth Warrick, optical-effects designer,
Linwood Dunn, Bogdanovich and Martin Scorsese, and 22-mins. of ‘Knowing
Welles’ – a reflection piece featuring Henry Jaglom, Gary Graver Martin
Ritt, Peter Bogdanovich and Frank Marshall. Cinematographers, Allen Daviau,
Haskell Wexler, and Vilmos Zsigmond weigh in on Greg Toland’s artistry.
There’s also an all-too-brief ‘audio
only’ appreciation from Roger Ebert, RKO Pathe News footage of the film’s
premiere, and, a theatrical trailer. We get snippets of Joseph Cotten’s 1966
and ’75 interviews for the AFI, an 8-min. short silent movie, ‘The Hearts of
Age’, Welles made while a student in 1934. But perhaps the best extras here
are the unfettered interviews given by Welles and John Houseman, respectively
in 1979 and 1988. In particular, Welles’ runs 42-mins. and is filled with the
old master’s self-deprecating good humor about his bitter struggles in
Hollywood. Houseman is his usual, well-appointed self, lasting just under 20-mins.
From 1996, we get an interview with
actor, William Alland also hovering around the 20-min. mark, and Houseman
again, this time in a more comprehensive 50-min. interview from 1995. There is
almost 2 hrs. of The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio plays – a stunning
back catalog of Welles’ radio days accomplishments. Finally, there’s On the
Nose – an 8 ½ minute short. Praise indeed needs to be given to Criterion
for this exceptional assemblage of extras, capped off by a handsome booklet,
containing an essay by film critic, Bilge Ebiri.
Less impressed am I with Mike
McQuade’s pack design. The four-sided gatefold housed within a cover marked in
a bold ‘K’ on the front, reveals the rest of the letters, spelling ‘K-A-N-E’ –
with corresponding artwork depicting Welles’ hero from young upstart to old
man. It’s a really cool design, except that the slip covers housing each of the
four discs (one 4K and three Blu-rays) is an ultra-tight and a real pain in the
ass to access. Worse, once the ‘K’ slip cover is removed, getting the package
to fit back neatly together results in its all-black outer shell getting
prematurely dog-eared. After only one viewing, mine already looks a little
ragged around the edges, despite my best attempts to be gentle. Bottom line: Citizen
Kane is Orson Welles’ supreme masterpiece. Criterion has forgone the Warner
swag of lobby cards and other reproductions here, and loaded this one with a
ton of goodies. Sorely missed, however, the one extra worth its weight in gold,
1996’s PBS documentary, The Battle Over Citizen Kane – a part of the
Warner set. So, if you already own that 70th anniversary Blu from
Warner, housed in the magnificent ‘puzzle’ box design, and, with a DVD copy of The
Magnificent Ambersons to boot, DO NOT part with it in fair trade for the Criterion.
One final bone of contention – the Blu-ray copy of the movie included herein is
flawed. Something went wrong in the mastering process resulting in contrast
suddenly taking a nosedive around the 30-minute mark and remaining brutally
anemic thereafter. Criterion has acknowledged this screw-up and has already instituted
a ‘replacement’ program.
Instructions are as follows: either
cut the disc marked ‘1’ in half, take a photo of it, and email
it, along with your full address to orders@criterion.com,
marking the email subject line “Citizen Kane BD Replacement” or
place the unaltered disc in an envelope containing your complete name and
mailing address and send it to:
The Criterion Collection
Attn: Jon Mulvaney / KANE
215 Park Ave South, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003
DO NOT send any packaging back if you are doing the ‘snail mail’ version. Criterion doesn’t care about the integrity of these defective discs once they arrive at their offices. They merely want to make certain no one who did not actually order the original set is getting freebees. As an added bonus, Criterion has promised a $10 voucher to Criterion.com along with the replacement disc. Now, that’s a class act!
FILM RATING (out
of 5 - 5 being the best)
5
VIDEO/AUDIO
4K version – 4.5
Blu-ray (?)
EXTRAS
5++
Comments