All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
No moviegoer had ever seen anything quite like Citizen Kane when it came out in 1941. Now, you can watch it nightly and relive Orson Welles' pioneering cinematic innovations, special-effects trickery, and storytelling mastery.
Want to relive the magic for free? Recall and recite the film's myriad advances in our comments section below for the chance to win the three-disc Citizen Kane: The 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition.
The legendary Welles admitted in the 1960s that he was working from a position of "sheer ignorance" when it came to Citizen Kane's striking advances. But he nevertheless managed to transform an extensive drama about the rise and fall of a media magnate named Charles Foster Kane – who Welles based on William Randolph Hearst, as well as himself – into a masterwork about the political art of mediation proper.
The 70th anniversary box set is available now on DVD and Blu-ray, and comes with three discs. The first is a 1080p high-definition restoration of the film from the original nitrate, with digital audio and more than three hours of bonus content. It is complemented by a 48-page behind-the-scenes book.
The second and third discs, respectively, are the Oscar-nominated but nevertheless controversial 1996 documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane, as well as producers Ridley and Tony Scott's RKO 281, a fictional feature about the cinema classic's turbulent production. It's a suitable three-headed hydra for film geeks looking to drill deeply into Citizen Kane's circular intertextuality.
If that's you, then hit the comments section below and tell us why the American Film Institute may have been on to something when it named Citizen Kane the greatest film of all time. Up for grabs is one DVD and one Blu-ray copy, so make sure to state which you prefer if you want to win. Entries must be received by 12:01 a.m. Pacific on Oct. 8, 2011.
Note: If you do not have an e-mail address or Twitter handle associated with your Disqus login, you must include contact information in your comment to be eligible. Any winner who does not respond to Wired’s notification within 72 hours will forfeit the prize.
See Also:- Comic Book Artists Illustrate Sci-Fi Legends
