CITIZEN KANE (MOVIE)

Orson Welles' Citizen Kane -- the Academy-Award®-winning masterwork that expanded filmmaking frontiers like no other movie in history -- will be released for the first time September 10 as a double-disc DVD in a newly packaged 60th anniversary collector's edition.

Hailed by critics and filmmakers as the greatest movie ever made, this classic will feature a breathtakingly restored picture and audio and digitally remastered video from the highest quality surviving elements, along with a variety of extras. Citizen Kane is available from all leading retailers.

"We began our three-year restoration process by searching for the best available film elements and then applying our latest digital technologies to restore the picture and audio," explained Ned Price, vice president of video mastering for Warner Bros. "As a result, Citizen Kane now looks and sounds better than it did even in its original theatrical release."

The second disc in this double-disc DVD release is The Battle Over Citizen Kane, the two-hour Oscar®-nominated documentary that chronicles the titanic struggle between filmmaker Orson Welles and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who claimed Citizen Kane was a thinly veiled and slanderous account of his own life. Interviews, film clips, newsreel footage and stills reveal the fascinating behind-the-scenes story of how Hearst used his formidable power to try to stop production and distribution of the film, and how he ultimately sought to destroy Welles himself.

Disc one of the double-disc DVD edition includes Citizen Kane with the following special features:

* Breathtakingly restored picture and audio and digitally remastered video from the highest quality surviving elements
* Two full-length audio commentaries -- one by noted film critic Roger Ebert and the other by writer/director and Welles biographer Peter Bogdanovich
* The 1941 New York movie premiere newsreel

* Gallery of storyboards, rare production photos, call sheets, and other memorabilia

* The original theatrical trailer

* English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles

Disc two on the Citizen Kane collector's edition DVD includes the two-hour documentary, The Battle Over Citizen Kane, featuring:

* Interviews with Welles, the stars of Citizen Kane and associates of Welles and Hearst
* Rare footage from Hearst's San Simeon estate and Welles' historic The War of the Worlds broadcast
* Biographical profiles of Welles and Hearst

ABOUT ORSON WELLES AND CITIZEN KANE:

Citizen Kane, according to director Martin Scorsese, made Orson Welles "responsible for inspiring more people to be film directors than anyone else in the history of cinema."

Starring, produced, directed and co-written by Welles, Citizen Kane opened May 1, 1941 at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood and was nominated that same year for nine Academy Awards®, winning the Oscar® for Best Screenplay.

Joseph Cotten played the investigative reporter Jedediah Leland, who delves into the life of Charles Foster Kane and his mysterious "Rosebud." Welles himself played Kane, in a role spanning the publisher's life, first as a boyish, ambitious young man to the old, bloated and embittered recluse he became. Other actors included Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick and Paul Stewart. Alan Ladd and Arthur O'Connell appeared uncredited as reporters.

The legendary Gregg Toland was the film's cinematographer, and Robert Wise, later a two-time Academy Award®-winning director, was the editor on the picture.

After remaining out of circulation for many years, in the early 1960s Citizen Kane was selected by a panel of film critics as the greatest film of all time. During the ensuing years, in poll after poll, Citizen Kane has been consistently ranked as the highest embodiment of film art. Says critic Roger Ebert, "[Sixty] years later, this towering achievement is as fresh, as provoking, as entertaining, as funny, as sad, as brilliant, as it ever was. Many agree it is the greatest film of all time." Critic and film historian Arthur Knight observed, "Less by imitation than by inspiration, the Orson Welles film has altered the look not only of American films, but of films the world over."

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