Citizen Kane

The persistent claim that it’s the “Greatest Movie Ever” leaves us a little cold—it seems a little too easy to put this at the top of the list, a safe choice nobody can really argue with. And the Rosebud mystery that bookends the drama seems more heavyhanded and gimmicky every time we watch it. Those quibbles aside, Orson Welles’ film debut is a true milestone, with fine acting and writing, direction and cinematography that from a technical standpoint were light-years ahead of their time. The most impressive achievement is that it was made at all, given that the motivating force was Welles’ ferocious loathing of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. It was no mean feat to get away with such a stealthy character assassination, deserved or not, on one of the most powerful multimillionaires of the time. And of course Welles didn’t escape unscathed—Hearst’s counterattacks poisoned the rest of his career. But even if he’d never made anything else, Kane assured his place in cinema Valhalla. This new three-disc special edition has all the behind-the-scenes story you could want: It is essentially last year’s two-disc set that included the terrific documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane plus HBO’s RKO 281 , a dramatic retelling of the same events featuring a perfectly cast Liev Schreiber as Welles.