Citizen Kane

I recently re-watched Orson Welles' celebrated first film Citizen Kane (1941). It has often been called the greatest film of all time, but lost out to Hitchcock's Vertigo this year in Sight & Sounds critic's poll. For the record, I prefer it to Vertigo. I am planning on showing it to my Literature Reading class in order to compare it to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Welles does some really groundbreaking things with the story structure as well as employing some astounding effects and deep focus camera shots along with a classic opening sequence. There's so much going on in the film that is ground breaking. This 70th anniversary edition has lots of great extras including commentaries form Peter Bogdonavich and Roger Ebert, a TV program called The Battle Over Citizen Kane, and a film about the making of the film by HBO starring Leiv Schreiber as Orson Welles called RKO 281.