{"id":4466,"date":"2012-03-23T12:33:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=4466"},"modified":"2012-03-23T12:33:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T16:33:00","slug":"dvd-battle-over-citizen-kane-1996","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=4466","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>B<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Excellent\/ DVD Transfer: Excellent\/ DVD Extras: Standard<\/p>\n

Label: PBS \/ Warner Home Video\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: November 4, 2000<\/p>\n

Genre: Documentary \/ Film History \/ TV<\/p>\n

Synopsis: \u00a0Finely detailed documentary on the battling egos as media tycoon William Randolph Hearst attempts to stop the release of Orson Welles’ movie debut, “Citizen Kane,” in 1941.<\/p>\n

Special Features: Text Bios<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Originally broadcast as part of PBS\u2019s The American Experience<\/strong> series, The Battle Over Citizen Kane<\/strong> is a rare example of a making-of documentary that goes far beyond the factual details of a film\u2019s production.<\/p>\n

Relying on several interviews and a wealth of archival materials, filmmakers Michael Epstein and Thomas Lennon use Citizen Kane<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] to trace the collision between two fiercely independent figures that used controversy to further their careers, but eventually lost their glory and reputation among industry insiders, and the public.<\/p>\n

William Randolph Hearst was a born into a privileged family and developed an early hunger to possess things very ornate and pretty, while Orson Welles\u2019 lacked a childhood, but was highly praised in his artistic efforts to the point where the child, the youth, and the young man turned into a brilliantly talented egotist.<\/p>\n

As Hearst found his calling as a media baron, mining real stories and fabricating details into shocking headlines to sell newspapers, Welles turned the stage on its end by mounting then audacious productions of contemporary and classic drama, sometimes transposing them to contemporary time periods, such as Macbeth<\/strong> repositioned in voodoo-steeped Haiti, and Julius Caesar<\/strong> in Nazi-dominated Nuremberg. Both men worked their staff to the bone, and when Welles turned to radio, his Halloween prank \u2013 a news-style broadcast of Martians invading the Earth in his infamous 1938 production of War of the Worlds<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] \u2013 Hollywood eventually took notice of the boy wonder, with RKO offering him an unheard of contract to make pictures with direction, writing, producing, and casting under his control.<\/p>\n

RKO passed on Welles\u2019 first two projects (including an adaptation of Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness<\/strong>), and to pundits and gossip columnists he was becoming a symbol of studio excess – monies wasted on an untried director (if not a young snot). Welles was eventually forced by time and a sense of professional honor to find some project before he was finished in Hollywood without having shot a single frame of film. The solution came from friend and veteran screenwriter \/ boozer Herman J. Mankiewicz, who had built up notes for a possible work on Hearst over a 20 year period. Welles loved the idea of satirizing a contemporary tycoon, and the project was eventually given the green light under Mankiewicz\u2019s title \u201cThe American.\u201d This marked the first step in making what many critics regard as the greatest film ever made, and the project that destroyed Welles\u2019 chance at ever sustaining a lengthy career in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

The parallels in the lives of Welles and Hearst are very striking, and it\u2019s amusing to see the contradictions, particularly when eyewitness interviews present Welles as a more calculating scoundrel when news clips or Welles\u2019 own on-camera testimony paints him as a kind of innocent soul who got lost in a whirlwind idea, be it the War of the Worlds<\/strong> shocker, or his treatment of the Mercury Theatre actors in live plays.<\/p>\n

Welles does maintain a presence in the doc through vintage interview clips from 1982, but the filmmakers often focus on Welles\u2019 rare introspective replies, where he shows regret, disappointment, and some humility for the more cruel in-jokes in Kane <\/strong>(Davies\u2019 interest in puzzles, and the \u2018rosebud\u2019 moniker) which only worsened Davies\u2019 image as an untalented, gold-digging actress working a career built by lover Hearst. Perhaps the most affecting moment has Welles theorizing he may have enjoyed a healthier career in radio, on the stage, or via prose works had he walked away from filmmaking after Kane<\/strong> and Ambersons<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Hearst\u2019s professional and financial end was a natural conclusion to blowing a substantive personal fortune on whatever he liked, with price never being an issue, but when Kane <\/strong>was released, the tycoon had already achieved his greatest professional successes, and had lived a full life (a detail not interpolated into the Charles Foster Kane character). Welles enjoyed similar meteoric success during his twenties, but by 25 he was regarded by Hollywood as a kind of has-been; his name still drew crowds as an actor, but the few studio directorial efforts were compromised by editorial changes, and Welles\u2019 own indie work often remained unfinished.<\/p>\n

As compelling as Battle may be in documentary form, its facts and striking drama proved worthy of a docu-drama, hence the production of RKO 281<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1996), the HBO TV movie based on Epstein and Lennon\u2019s doc, which is also worth a peek (and is available separately or as part of Warner Home Video\u2019s Citizen Kane 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector\u2019s Edition on DVD and Blu-ray.<\/p>\n

WHV\u2019s mastering of Battle<\/strong> is very clean, and includes the original opening and closing credits from its American Masters broadcast. Among the interview subjects, Peter Bogdanovich also contributed a commentary track to WHV\u2019s Kane<\/strong> release. Welles expert & film historian Richard France provides additional details in the doc, and George Romero fans will recognize the stentorian-voiced figure from his appearances in There\u2019s Always Vanilla<\/strong> (1971), The Crazies<\/strong> (1973), and Dawn of the Dead<\/strong> (1978).<\/p>\n

Michael Epstein\u2019s other documentaries include Hitchcock, Selznick and the End of Hollywood<\/strong> (1998) for American Masters<\/strong>, and Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven\u2019s Gate<\/strong> (2004).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Amazon Links & KQEK.com’s Media Store:<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/a> —– Amazon.com<\/a> —– Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0B<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ B . Film: Excellent\/ DVD Transfer: Excellent\/ DVD Extras: Standard Label: PBS \/ Warner Home Video\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: November 4, 2000 Genre: Documentary \/ Film History \/ TV Synopsis: \u00a0Finely detailed documentary on the battling egos as media tycoon William Randolph Hearst attempts to stop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[1145,435,245],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1a2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4466"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4512,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4466\/revisions\/4512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}