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This special 2 DVD set of the film long placed at the top of the list of greatest American movies comes, as they say in the car sales business, fully loaded:

DVD Features:

Available Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese
Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
Remastered
Commentary by: Orson Welles,Peter Bogdanovich,Roger Ebert
Disc 1:
Feature Film
1941 Movie Premiere Newsreel
Gallery of storyboards, rare photos, alternate ad campaign, studio and personal correspondence, call sheets and other memorabilia
Disc 2:
Two-Hour Documentary: The Battle Over Citizen Kane, details the power struggle between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst

The legendary film directed by and starring Welles, when he was only 26, is almost weighted down with being considered by many film critics as the most artful American movie ever made.

That praise would certainly be a mystery to fans of Adam Sandler and Jack Black films, but it is one not far off the mark if you are one who views cinema as an art form.

Welles was a prodigy who brought innovation, storytelling, camera angles, lighting, and flawless acting to a thinly disguised story based on the life of legendary media tycoon (and perhaps the forerunner of FOX News): William Randolph Hearst.

In fact, this 2 DVD set includes a fascinating documentary on how Hearst did everything in his power to suppress and then sabotage the commercial success of "Citizen Kane." It is a non-fiction tale that resulted from a flawless cinematic masterpiece.

Sometimes, it seems, the legend of "Citizen Kane's" brilliance can never live up to actually watching the film for the first time viewer. For those who have never seen it, we recommend forgetting about the intimidating hype and just watch it as a tale of one man's unfulfilled life.

There's no question that it shines brighter for lovers of film as an art form, but it also succeeds as a fascinating piece of storytelling.

As one online reviewer writes, "Welles' masterpiece is great not just because of the movie itself-- which Welles wrote, produced, and directed at the tender age of twenty-six (by contrast, Muranu was thirty-four when he directed Nosferatu, Romero twenty-nine at the time of Night of the Living Dead, Riefenstahl thirty-three at the time of Triumph des Willens)-- but because of the politics surrounding it. I won't even begin to attempt to get into that here; the American Experience documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane (thoughtfully included with the 2005 Warner two-disc set) is longer than the film itself. See The Battle Over Citizen Kane soon after seeing the movie itself to get some perspective."

A Roger Ebert commentary is also included in the 2 disc set.


BUZZFLASH REVIEWS