Cat.no: 051 894 2

Cert: U

Running time: 114 minutes

Year: 1941

Pressing: 1999

Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)

Chapters: 18 plus extras

Sound: Stereo

Languages: English

Subtitles: English

Fullscreen: 4:3

16:9-enhanced: No

Macrovision: Yes

Disc Format: DVD 5

Price: £17.99

Extras : Scene index, Trailer, Booklet

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Director:

Orson Welles (Confidential Report, The Immortal Story, The Lady from Shanghai, Macbeth, The Magnificent Ambersons, Othello, The Stranger, The Trial)

Producer:

Orson Welles

Screenplay:

Herman J. Mankewicz and Orson Welles

Music:

Bernard Herrmann

Cast:

Charles Foster Kane: Orson Welles (Compulsion, Confidential Report, The Immortal Story, Jane Eyre, Journey Into Fear, The Lady from Shanghai, A Man For All Seasons, Othello, RoGoPaG, The Stranger, The Third Man, The Trial, Waterloo)
Susan Alexander: Dorothy Comingore
Jedediah Leland/Newsreel Reporter: Joseph Cotten (Airport 77, The House Where Death Lives, Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte, Journey Into Fear, The Magnificent Ambersons, Niagara, Soylent Green, The Third Man, Tora! Tora! Tora!)
Mrs. Kane: Agnes Moorehead (Dark Passage, Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte, Journey Into Fear, The Magnificent Ambersons, Showboat)

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The flashbacks are dropped in as a result of the present day reporters who are looking back over his life, interviewing everyone who ever knew him and trying to get an overall picture on what he was really like.

The film was Orson Welles directorial debut and he certainly turns in a great performance in his own right, but I still prefer the barrister role he played in Compulsion, a cinemascope version of Hitchcock's Rope, starring Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap, Blue Velvet) and Bradford Dillman. I don't know any of the other actors in the film though as the 40s is not my area of speciality when it comes to film eras.

When it comes to picture quality, on the plus side it's free of artifacts, but being an old film there are many flecks and small dropouts in the print. Perhaps a remastering is in order? As for the ratio, the film is presented in its original Academy ratio, although it can often comfortably be zoomed in to 14:9 on a widescreen TV. The average bitrate is 5.4Mb/s, once peaking over 9Mb/s.

The soundtrack is labelled as stereo, but all other releases have been mono and I don't hear any differences between the output of either front left and right speakers, so I presume this follows suit.

Extras :

Chapters :

Languages & Subtitles :

Booklet :

Menu :

Overall :

However, it's a shame Universal didn't see fit to include the "Reflections on Citizen Kane" documentary, already rated by the BBFC and included on the video release, in which Ridley Scott, Martin Scorsese and Brian DePalma relate how their own work has been influenced by this film.

I don't know of a Region 1 DVD being available, but the NTSC Laserdisc 50th Anniversary Edition, released in 1991, also contained an audio commentary, "The Hearts of Age" - a short film by Welles when a student aged 18, stills, storyboards and a 73-minute documentary, "Legacy of Citizen Kane". If Universal had been able to release all that on a disc together, it would've been quite a coup for DVD owners.

FILM	 		: ***
PICTURE QUALITY 	: **½
SOUND QUALITY		: **
EXTRAS			: *½
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OVERALL			: **

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.