Rating: 
Summary: Citizen Kane DVD
Review: An absolute cultural treasure! Great value for the money. The Ebert and Bogdanovich overdubs reviewing the technical aspects of the movie and pointing highlights are excellent for non-scolars like myself. The PBS program about Hearst versus Wells is an extra bonus, and adds to the historical significance of the movie. The entire package makes for many hours of viewing, and education.
Rating: 
Summary: An overrated and boring film.
Review: In spite of all the hype that has been generated for this movie, I frankly find it boring and extremely slow moving. Orson Welles is ponderous, and his character is almost cartoonish. He is so domineering that the other characters almost seem like an afterthought. While I like fine film making, I found the use of dubious camera angles distracting. The plot is so stiff that it is borish beyonf belief. I own the VHS version but will not buy it for my DVD collection, which is replacing my VHS collection.
Rating:
Summary: Great Classic
Review: An excellent movie. It is definatly not a movie for those who like alot of action but I find the the story riviting. The skill of Orson Wells is truely amazing.By the way, pay attention to the name of the sled. It'll come in handy.
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Summary: Illusion, Ambiguity, and Tragedy
Review: In his commentary on this DVD director Peter Bogdanovich remarks on how Orson Welles once told him that while aspects of Citizen Kane had been mightly influential, (deep focus, overlapping dialogue, having the ceiling in a shot,) the things that Welles thought truly important about the film were never widely used by film-makers. Bogdanovich doesn't elaborate on what exactly the Master considered the important aspects of the film but from what I know about Welles I would have to think that what he considered truly valuable about Kane was its use of illusion, misdirection, and audience expectation to tell the tragic story of Charles Foster Kane. From a dramatic standpoint Welles' goal was to produce a truly Shakespearean vision in then modern day America but from a cinematic view the film-maker's intent remained true to the qualities he had brought to both his stage and radio productions. Namely ambiguity, uncertainty, magic. Nothing in Kane is as it seems. Temporal and spatial perception are as malleable as the ore which gave Kane his wealth. Characters walk into photographs, Newsreels become real, locations freeze into newspaper headlines. One such headline famously describes Kane's love Susan Alexander as "singer". Jed Leland says Kane "spent his whole life trying to remove those quotes." But all of Citizen Kane is in quotes.
The DVD is excellent, the film looks spectacular, and the extras are fun. The commentaries by Ebert and Bogdanovich are fascinating. Ebert's commentary focuses more on the film, with almost shot by shot explanations of what's going on, while Bogdanovich's comments are more personal, more concerned with warm anecdotes about his friend Orson. There are at least two 'Easter Eggs' contained in the menu selection, one an interview with Robert Wise, the other with Ruth Warrick. Both are interesting, if too short. The American Experience documentary on Disc 2 provides the fascinating backstory behind the film's production, but I, for one, believe one shouldn't make too much of 'Kane-Hearst' parallels or 'Kane-Welles' parallels, for that matter. The joy of the film rests in its timeless inventiveness; its examination of both the historical and the ephemeral, and how the two intertwine; the humor, warmth, and pathos of the characters.
This is an essential for any DVD library.
Rating:
Summary: Greatest Movie of All Time -- even better on DVD
Review: This DVD is probably the best DVD that I own (I have close to 200). With all the extras that come with it and the details that are included, it's not only a great movie, but it's a great resource as well for movie buffs. The history behind the movie and the documentary "The Battle over Citizen Kane" (included) is wonderful and it really shows the wild creativity that Orson Welles displays in his first film effort. This DVD is terrific!
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: To all those people that say the people that like it are basically brainwashed and don't know how to think for themselves all I can say is don't lash out at people who like it if you don't get it. Go to your dumbed down "Pearl Harbors" and whatever it is you watch and let us movie buffs enjoy. No, it's not the best movie ever (I've seen better) but it is definitely a technical achievement and an excellent story that unravels. This DVD contains an excellent transfer and great extras (though the documentary is slightly disappointing). A must for fans and film buffs (not Michael Bay followers).
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Summary: Won me over again on DVD
Review: A lot of the reviews here stew over Citizen Kane's place in history, its watchability for people who aren't film buffs, and all that. I'd come down on the side of this being an amazingly well-written, engaging movie, myself. Hey, I was one of those skeptics when I first saw Kane, but it's a great story, told in a really winning way, with fantastic acting and a real sense of honesty to everything about it. Even leaving that alone, though -- wow, does this DVD ever understand what makes you want a DVD. First of all, the image transfer is astonishingly clean. If you have an old tape of this movie, you're going to sit up in your chair three or four times and realize you never even saw this or that whole scene before; the images are that much clearer than your bleary old VHS copy. It has that visual zing that you get from really good DVDs. Then there are the extras. You get a whole extra two hours' worth of the American Experience episode, which is extremely satisfying entertainment for anyone who's ever liked a televised biography. (American Experience bios are sometimes breathtakingly good, and this is a superb example.) You get original storyboards for scenes. You get letters from Orson Welles. You get studio memos from the censors. You get production photos. The two soundtracks' worth of commentary are quite different, complementing each other well, and both of them are good fun. (I wish Roger Ebert could stop talking long enough to breathe, or that the sound balance was a little lower [or less consistent] on him during his soundtrack, but he has a lot to offer.) If you're on the fence, Kane is absolutely worth buying in this form. The only DVD I've been quite this impressed by is the Criterion Collection version of The Third Man, for similar reasons: superb restoration; loads of fun extras; and a dazzling, classic, complex and satisfying movie to begin with.
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Summary: I'll Only Say Things that Are Not Mentioned in other reviews
Review: First, the fact that when middle aged boomers like myself were in school, the one thing we probably all knew about Orson Welles was his 1938 Radio Show WAR OF THE WORLDS, and his movie career was a very secondary thing. CITIZEN KANE is probably the most written about (see the late Pauline Kael's famous piece etc.) movie ever, but many have still not seen it,even after the mid-1980's video era began. It was rarely on TV before then. Notice the handling of the young boy with his mother in the snow storm,and his being told he'll be rich, and moving on to better things with his new guardian, and the boy's sadness,and losing the sled. Right from the start, Lord Acton's comment "Money corrupts absolutely", one of the great themes thruout this incredible feast of a movie. We all know it was Welles' first chance to do his own movie, and,like Mozart, he proved himself a Boy Wonder!! The shots and narration of the "Castle" with all the animals. This too is a wondrous scene, but they continue all the way thru....ending only in the final scene of the fires burning and the sled marked by the famous name, the utterance of the great,but defeated, man on his death bed. All he really wanted was the innocence of youth, as the middle of the film shows his slow decline and corruption. At least that's my take on it...Other great short scenes include Kane meeting with Hitler, Mussolini (I think..I have not scene this for years, and am writing this strictly from memory.) etc. The growth of the newspaper empire is beautifully done too...Obviously, the lighting and cinematography is perfection all the way,as is the make-up and aging of Orson's own portrayal,ie from a young man to a senior,maybe 50 years of Kane's life...The only weak spot IMHO are the operatic scenes where his second wife squeals away, cheap shots at Hearst and Marion Davies..And there's the dinner table scenes with his first wife,perfectly showing the deterioration of a marriage,as they slowly begin to ignore each other (too familiar for many of us probably). Anything and everything by Welles has at least a stroke of genius, and CITIZEN KANE is one long stroke. After this don't miss the rare LADY FROM SHANGHAI,and MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. The others are all great in that special Wellesian way, but these three are the top. And don't miss THE THIRD MAN ,based on Graham Greene's classic story of post-war Vienna, with Welles really stealing the show as a scoundrel of the worst kind!!
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Summary: Stunning transfer--maybe best yet any B&W film has received
Review: Even if you have this already, even if you've seen it a million times and feel the film holds no surprises, you should still get this DVD. There's never been this much grayscale in a print of Kane. The restoration team actually went to the best sources for each reel (the original negatives do not survive) and then digitally-removed each and every scratch from the final composite print (except in the newsreel sequence, where some of the footage is supposed to look scratched). The sound is rich and full but has no phony exaggerated hi-fi characteristics. Chapters are easy to access. Packaging is first rate. In short, there isn't anything to gripe about. The first disc also has the original theatrical trailer (as original in its own way as the film itself, and a hoot), production stills, bios, newsreel footage of the 1941 premiere--in short all the stuff you'd expect. Then it has a couple of terrific bonuses in the form of running commentary from Peter Bogdonovich, who knew Welles and wrote a bio on him, and everyone's favorite sweatered film critic, Roger Ebert. You might think a total of four hours' of lecturing on Kane while the film plays would be tedious in the extreme, but you'd be wrong. The second disc is a real treat: an Oscar-nominated American Masters documentary from 1995 entitled The Battle Over Citizen Kane, which parallels the life stories of Hearst and Welles as they rose to prominence and fell from influence. I had taped this show off TV when PBS aired it, but I was thrilled to get this bonus disc of the same documentary here, razor sharp and in superb sound. Younger folks who don't know much about Citizen Kane beyond the fact that it's considered a "great film," or who don't know about Welles' many other accomplishments, or about the life of Hearst and the evolution of muckraking journalism, can watch this 2-hour documentary and then have a deeper appreciation of the movie. The documentary makes a great companion disc and was a wise choice. At the price this is a steal (essentially the second disc is free), the transfer superb, and of course Kane is great, still stunning after all these years. (A lot of the camera tricks would be hard to pull off even today, in this age of advanced optics and computers.) There are some really thrilling sequences, snappy dialogue ("I lost a million dollars running the paper this year. I lost a millon dollars running the paper last year. I expect to lose a million dollars running the paper next year. You know, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in sixty years.") and terrific performances from everyone save Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander, who in my view wasn't quite up to the complex role. (On the other hand George Coulouris as Mr. Thatcher and Ray Collins as "Boss" Jim W. Gettys are terrific even though they occupy relatively short screen time.) The cinematography and editing were literally 20 years ahead of their time. Whether or not Kane is "the greatest film of all time," it is certainly one of the most influential, and interesting in that it ultimately ended up being more about Welles than about Hearst. (Which one of them wound up dying alone and lonely and embittered like the character of the film?) This was the first DVD I bought and a cornerstone of any movie collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Increasingly Problematic With The Passage Of Time
Review: In order to survive the passing years, a film must be able to transcend the limitations of the era in which it was made. This is a difficult test, particularly for films that largely rely upon new technology and innovative technique for impact: as these new effects are seen more often in other films, we come to accept them as standard, and in consequence the film that introduced them no longer has same the freshness as once it did. To a certain extent CITIZEN KANE faces precisely this problem. A pioneer in the use of deep focus photography and in innovative editing, KANE stunned audiences of its day with a powerful visual and aural montage. Some forty years later, however, most filmgoers have had at least some opportunity to see other and later films that at least approximate KANE's effects; consequently, these elements lack the same impact they once had, and the film must increasingly rely upon story, script, and performances for continued appeal. And it is here that KANE runs into a bit of trouble. The story KANE tells is quite cold, and although the script has incredible precision, bite, and complexity, it ultimately presents its characters as second-rate personalities who prove unable to transform their lives into anything beyond the pathos they so deplore. They are not likable enough to be sympathetic, they are not dark enough to fully stir our curiosity, and for all Charles Foster Kane's millions they ultimately emerge as merely so many opportunity-squandering unfortunates. As such, while they certainly engage the viewer in an intellectual sense, they seldom engage the viewer in an emotional one; this coupled with the fact that the film's technique no longers offers quite the same shock-of-the-new as once it did makes CITIZEN KANE increasingly problematic with the passage of time. There is a tremendous amount to admire in CITIZEN KANE, but with each passing year it becomes more and more of a historian's darling and less and less of a film that remains able to engage a purely casual viewer at all levels. Even so, it is (and will no doubt for the foreseeable future remain) a landmark film, one that will be worthy of considerable reverence for many years to come.
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