Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Citizen Kane

This is topic Citizen Kane in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Sean M. Grimes (Member # 445) on 02-04-2001, 04:11 AM:

Has anyone seen the 1997 re-release? I heard that the negs have been destroyed and was wondering of the quality of any remaining prints. Thankyou for your peoples help ahead of time.

Rock on!!!

Sean

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-04-2001, 05:23 AM:

I ran Kane at the Egyptian Theater for the Millennium film fest. The print was pretty nice. Definately not as good as an older B&W, but better than the average that is churned out today.
Mark @ GTS

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-04-2001, 05:57 AM:

I believe the camera negs were lost due to nitrate decomposition.

Kane was re-released in the UK by the Feature Film Co. in 1998, which I guess would have been in prints used for the 1997 US release (or at least, struck from the same interneg). I thought the prints were disappointingly flat - but there again, I was comparing them against a nitrate print shown at the NFT a few years ago.

The soundtrack was mainly unilateral (with shuttered noise reduction), with RCA duplex on one reel. The s/n ratio was very low -remastering the track would have helped a lot.

All in all, I thought this re-release was a bit of a let-down, especially compared to the BFI's 1998 re-release of 'The Magnificent Ambersons', the prints of which were sharp, contrasty and with a very clean soundtrack.

Posted by John Schulien (Member # 215) on 02-05-2001, 11:11 AM:

The original negative of Citizen Kane was destroyed in a vault nitrate fire.

Posted by Mitchell Cope (Member # 32) on 02-05-2001, 11:16 AM:

Rosebud!

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-05-2001, 11:26 AM:

Here's a link to information about the Library of Congress film vaults in Dayton, Ohio, which mentions that the original nitrate negative for "Citizen Kane" was destroyed in a fire:
http://www.library.kent.edu/~nbirk/wpnitrate.html

Here's a link to many articles on film preservation:
http://users.itsnet.com/~stfamily/fpres.htm

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 02-05-2001, 11:27 AM:

Ha, that's pretty funny! I see them tossing in film instead......

A theater near me is running "Kane", as part of a fund-raiser next week. It's $500 per person (you get dinner, too.) I know the operator there, but he says he can't sneak me in.... I seriously consitered sneaking in anyway, but it's a black-tie affair and my waistline said goodbye to my tux a long time ago, so I'd be ID'ed in a moment.......

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 02-05-2001, 11:43 AM:

Whadda ya' mean can't sneak in?

Just put on a white shirt and tie, no blazer. Grab your tool case in one hand and an empty film can in the other and head up to the booth. Look the doorman right in the eye and say "Hi" as you walk right past without stopping. If anybody questions you don't say anything. Just ask, "Which way to the booth?"

Your buddy should be waiting at the bottom of the booth stairs when you get there. The two of you stop briefly to exchange pleasantries then head STRAIGHT to the booh and don't stop.

I've walked straight into theatres where nobody knows I'm comming and nobody knows who I am and have only been questioned once or twice. When I ask, "Where's the booth?", they just point me in the right direction.

Only ONCE have I been actually "stopped".

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 02-05-2001, 11:57 AM:

Randy: Shhh! Don't give away the "tricks of the trade".

Most projectionists welcome having other operators visit. I especially liked the older General Cinema Theatre designs (like the GCC Northpark in Dallas, or the GCC Boulevard Mall in Buffalo) that had a private "projectionist's balcony" just in front of the booth.

Posted by System Notices (Member # 2357) on 05-24-2008, 03:06 PM:

It has been 2665 days since the last post.

Posted by Amanda Mundin (Member # 3386) on 05-24-2008, 03:06 PM:

Received a print of this, from the 1999 re-release, which has 'Dolby A Encoded' printed onto every head leader, has anybody heard of this? We've never had an old academy mono film that states it is Dolby A Encoded

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 05-24-2008, 08:46 PM:

Dolba A mono, of course. Prints are out there, but not common.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-25-2008, 10:14 AM:

Nice that when they did the rerelease they rerecorded the track and if they went thru that process, one would hope that additionally, they applied some of the modern processing techniques available to remove background noise. That said, I wonder why it wasn't encoded SR instead of A, unless they were using a sound negative from an earlier release.

Amanda, how did it sound?

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-25-2008, 10:42 AM:

Actually, Dolby-A makes a lot of sense.

Dolby-A plays in mono theatres just fine with a little bit of HF preemphasis...which in typical mono systems tends to help their HF response. If you have a modern processor, Dolby-A is supported. The soundtrack of that film, even if gone back to original elements, is not going to take advantage of the extra dynamic range that SR would provide.

SR would, at best, sound no better, and at worst make a mono theatre sound worse. Citizen Kane is most likely to play in Art/Rep houses, which often have compromised sound sytems due to being multi-use facilities or running on shoe-string budgets and those that are well equipped always can handle Dolby-A.

Steve

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-25-2008, 10:46 AM:

Very good point.

Who is releasing this nowadays? Is it a Criterion title?

Posted by Richard P. May (Member # 3598) on 05-25-2008, 12:01 PM:

CITIZEN KANE is part of the Turner Entertainment/WB library, and is distributed by WB's Classics office.

DM

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 05-25-2008, 02:09 PM:

The rights to CITIZEN KANE is controlled by Time Warner and is a part of Turner Entertainment library of films and not Criterion. I believe the film was distributed to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures and Time Warner owns most or All of their library of films. Criterion is a DVD distribution company and a division of Janus Films.

I have the deluxe edition of CITIZEN KANE on DVD and the transfer is excellent and so is the mono sound, I first saw this movie in a theatre when I was a little boy when my parents took my brother and sister and I to see it. Because I have always considered it one of my favorite films, I would not mind seeing it again on the big screen someday.

-Claude

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 05-25-2008, 05:01 PM:

Wasn't there a mistake awhile ago where someone sold digitally 'cleaned-up' KANE DVD's, but ended up accidently removing the rain from some scenes?

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-25-2008, 06:15 PM:

Digital does seem to have that propensity. When IMAX demonstrated the results of a DMR blowup to SMPTE in NY, they screened the conversion of APOLLO 13. Before the film the IMAX tech told us that when the software was "cleaning" the film grain during the conversion, for the shot of the astronaut's glove filled with sand and the sand spilling through the fingers, the software removed the sand. The tech explained that they had to go back and tell the computer to put the sand back in, stupid. It got a big laugh.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 05-25-2008, 06:45 PM:

They had the same kind of thing shown as an extra on a recent Wizard of OZ DVD I had gotten my mom.

Since the different layers of film didn't end up lining up properly (each of the originals had warped at random amounts), they ended up having where the correct general image would come through on transfer but randomly there'd be a spot of, say, red because the magenta layer hadn't been lined up right. So they created an automated way to remove those spots. This worked great at first until they noticed that the ruby slippers were no longer red since the computer assumed that they were so red that it had to be the magenta layer being the bad one.

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 05-27-2008, 10:17 AM:

Similarly, when Transitfilm in Munich was doing the restoration of METROPOLIS, they were using automated software to clean the image up. They found that whenever something moved fast-- an arm swinging, or a paper being folded up, it all of a sudden disappeared, because the computer was recognizing it as something that was only in the frame for a second and therefore must be a speck to remove.

Needless to say, we've come a long way in eight years, but there are still problems, particularly with studio de-graining the image and then "sharpening" it again with edge enhancement to the point where the image is a smoothed-over, over-enhanced mess.