So this came out on 4K Blu-ray recently, and I wanted to watch it and see what it looked like in this new version, but also… I’d already watched it recently[1], so wasn’t sure I wanted to just sit down and rewatch it that soon. But of course, this is Criterion and the disc comes with piles of extras including no fewer than three separate commentary tracks. So I put on the Roger Ebert one and gave it a whirl.

I don’t generally listen to commentary tracks — I listened to the ones from Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens about the LOTR movies, which were fascinating about their adaptation choices and some behind the scenes stuff, but other than that, I think maybe the only other one I listened to is actually also an Ebert track, on Dark City.

So on the one hand, it is interesting: Ebert keeps up a good patter through the movie, and then obviously you’re looking at what he’s talking about, so it’s flowy and interactive that way; and to all appearances, he knows his stuff, and is full of interesting info about the movie. Probably the biggest surprise to me is how much of it is “special effects” where what looks like a regular scene is actually multiple elements composited together with an optical printer. As Ebert says, repeatedly, this is as much a special effects extravaganza as Star Wars, it’s just not as obviously so.

That “repeatedly” in the previous sentence gets at the “on the other hand” caveat, though: This isn’t really the ideal format to present your technical analysis of the movie, because you end up saying the same thing over and over. “You’ll note the witness in the lower right corner again on this scene,” or whatever. The Criterion Channel has these wonderful “Observations On Film Art” video essays that are like 15-20 minutes and talk through some aspect of film art — the most recent one contrasts the use of the 4:3 aspect ratio and the Cinemascope aspect ratio in two of Godard’s films — and I can’t help but think that would be a better format for Ebert than a commentary. Rather than watching a two hour film, and getting a hodge-podge of sometimes repetitive observations along the way, you could talk about the topics in a focused way, and show the relevant clips that illustrate the point.

But of course, to some extent, I did want to actually see the film here, too, just to satisfy my curiosity about what a 4K HDR transfer of an old movie looks like. In one sense, Kane isn’t the best showcase for this — the restoration notes in the booklet say that the original negative is lost, and this is made from the interpositive where possible, but sometimes even that was damaged and they had to use an internegative. So you’re just not going to get a tack-sharp, stunningly clear 4K image.

But you’re still going to get the best this has ever looked in our lifetimes, and probably ever. The HDR is subtle enough that it probably wouldn’t even read as “HDR” visually if you didn’t know, but the broader dynamic range and bit depth give it smooth gradations and that extra bit of brightness here and there. The 4K resolution isn’t night-and-day better than 1080p here, but it’s still better, with finer film grain and good detail and (thanks to a higher bitrate and better compression algorithms on 4K discs) absolutely no digital artifacting. This disc isn’t a showpiece for 4K or HDR, but it is an effective demonstration of how 4K and HDR can result in a reference quality restoration for older, even imperfectly-preserved, movies. (If you want to stare at screen grabs for yourself, here’s a good still that captures the difference between the 4K and Blu-ray pretty well, keeping in mind that it’s flattened the HDR down into SDR range there.)

Anyway, this version of Citizen Kane technically: solid A. Ebert’s commentary: solid B+.

  1. Well, “recently,” I guess. I would have said some time in 2020, but actual fact: 2018. Which is tbh probably long enough ago that a rewatch wouldn’t be too weird, but oh well. ↩︎