Box office for Citizen Kane's first run in 1941

[duhaussie]

Does anyone have figures or stats for 'Citizen Kane's original release? Did it even crack the top 10 movies for 1941 in terms of box office?

[mido505]

There is a very thorough post on Kane's original release at the amazing Greenbriar Picture Show site: http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot. ... tizen.html

According to the post, Kane did $990,000 in domestic rentals, and $300,000 foreign, for a loss of $160,000.

I recommend this site to all Wellesnetters and movie fans in general. There are several worthwhile posts on Welles and Kane.

Follow this link to read about Kane's release history after the abortive first run: http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot. ... house.html

[atcolomb]

Thoses are great links to the history of showing Kane in the theaters and on TV and it does bring back memories of seeing the C&C logo in the begining of The Magnificent Ambersons on my Chicago tv station back in the mid 70's but on Kane they did show the RKO logo. Also my first VHS tape i ever saw was the Nostalgia Merchant's version of Kane which i saw at the library.

[Roger Ryan]

Yes, thanks for the great links. That explains why KANE and other R.K.O. releases looked so bad for so many years. I still have my Nostalgia Merchant videotape of KANE, but it's on Betamax, not VHS!

I'm reminded of seeing KANE in the early 80s on local television edited to fit two hours with commercial breaks. The newsreel sequence was indeed eliminated as were many other scenes. In fact, so much material was cut that it took about 50 minutes to realize that Kane was a newspaper publisher! The final indignity was the station still ran out of time and literally cut to the local news as Raymond the butler exclaimed "Throw that junk in". That's right, the burning sled was never shown so "Rosebud" remained a mystery for viewers that night.

[Dan]

I first saw "Citizen Kane" when I was 12 years old. Jean Shepherd was on radio station WOR-AM in NYC. One night in 1969 he says that this great old movie Citizen Kane would be playing the next night on WOR-TV, channel 9. (At the time WOR was an RKO station.)

So the next night I watch this grainy old movie on my little 12" b/w TV. It's 40 years ago but I'm pretty certain that they squeezed it into a 90-minute time slot.

Flash foward to 1974. I took a film course in my senior year of catholic HS. We were lucky enough to have a teacher who I believe was writing either his masters or doctoral thesis on the films of Orson Welles. So we saw Kane and Ambersons via 16mm projector. Better than channel-9 but still dark prints.

(That teacher's name was Mr. R. Black. No idea what became of him but if he ever reads this, thanks for introducing me to serious "cinema"!)

Now we are in the 1980s VCR era. I purchased the Nostalgia Merchant VHS. Better than channel-9 and 16mm but still that dark print. Later on I purchased the slightly better Turner Home Video VHS. (I still have both tapes.)

Finally in 2001 the DVD of Kane arrives at my local Costco. I was shocked at the beautiful brighter clarity of the film. It was as if Warner went back in time to 1941 and snatched a fresh print for the transfer. I wondered why wasn't this source, whatever it was, used for previous releases.

Will the Blu-Ray of Kane blow away even the superb DVD release???

[Glenn Anders]

What often strikes me about the lobby cards is that the illustrator had some idea of what Welles looked like, but not a clue concerning Ruth Warrick and Dorothy Comingore. It's like a rendering of two different women.

Glenn

[mido505]

Dan:

The original nitrate negative for Citizen burned in a vault fire some time ago (nitrate materials are highly flammable and dangerous). The Kane restoration was done from a fine grain positive. A fine grain is an intermediate positive print made directly from the original negative, which is then used to generate a duplicate negative, from which exhibition prints are struck. This is done to avoid undo wear on the original negative. As you can see, under the best of circumstances, exhibition prints are three generations away from the o-neg. Other elements used were a good quality dupe negative, and original nitrate print. These elements were then combined and subjected to a digital cleanup process to remove accumulated dirt, scratches, etc. Information on the restoration can be found here http://www.dvdempire.com/Content/interv ... sp?userid= and here http://www.thebigpicturedvd.com/bigreport11.shtml

The old VHS released would have used extant prints, with all the attendant deterioration, which is why they looked so bad.

There has been some criticism of the Kane restoration as having been too zealous in removing grain, and in brightening scenes. Remember, pristine original nitrate prints of Kane would have been at least three generations away from the o-neg, so grain would have been visible. Grain is an inherent part of the photographic process, and was understood to be so by the directors and other technicians responsible for making a film. Grain buildup, and loss of detail and contrast resulting from excessive duplication is a genuine problem, but viewing grain itself as an enemy to be conquered is equally problematic. Robert Harris discusses the issue here http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/ ... 22002.html and here http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:5d ... cd=1&gl=us

I have not been able to find any comment by Harris on the actual Kane restoration. I thought it was terrific, if a bit bright in spots, especially in the "projection room" sequence. Thoughts?

[Dan]

Dan:
...I have not been able to find any comment by Harris on the actual Kane restoration. I thought it was terrific, if a bit bright in spots, especially in the "projection room" sequence. Thoughts?

The problem I always had with the pre-DVD Kane was that you couldn't make out enough detail, in scenes like the projection room. Now I was taught that Welles did that intentionally to get the audience to focus on the dialog. But I can't believe that scenes like that were meant to be so dark as to be the other extreme of lacking in meaningful detail. IIRC Lowry did the Kane restoration, and the Casablanca restoration for the 2-disc edition. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I'll get out my Turner VHS and take a look at it to get a hint of the "old" Kane. (My awful Nostalgia Merchant VHS is boxed away and hard to get to.)

[mido505]

Dan:

Forgive me, I improperly pasted the second link in the above post; it is now working. The link is to an interview with Lowry Digital Images founder John Lowry. Lowry's firm was responsible for digital cleanup on the Kane restoration, as well as for Casablance and other movie classics. The interview contains an extensive discussion of the Kane restoration.

My quibble with the Kane restoration is that too much detail has been made visible in the projection room sequence. This was the first sequence shot (one of the famous "tests"), and Welles used whatever actors were at hand, including Joe Cotton, Erskine Sanford, and a young Alan Ladd. The faces were supposed to be hidden in shadow because the actors were playing other roles in the film! It was a practical consideration! Of course, the genius Welles turned necessity into art, emphasizing the "facelessness" of the reporters, including the shadowy Thompson, who remains an indistinct figure throughout the film.

Other than that, I love the restoration, including, outside of that one scene, all the marvelous new detail.

[Glenn Anders]

Dan: It is important to remember, too, that the primary skills Welles brought to the Movies were from the Theater and Radio, in both of which he was an American innovator. In the Theater, he had emphasized simplicity of scenic presentation (made famous by his friend Thornton Wilder in Our Town), and in Radio, he had used microphone placement and sound levels to establish dramatic and emotional distance. Light and dark, high and low, to zero in on what he wished an audience to concentrate upon, to experience.

And so, in the famous screening room "test" sequence, as mido505, suggests, while he would not want actors recognized he would use later in the film, he also did not care if they were seen or not because they were not important as individuals to the dramatic, emotional and intellectual effect of his presentation. None of these "little people," these "underlings," counted as real human beings as they fulfilled their roles of "yes men." Only Mr. Rawlston (Philip van Zant), in a typical Wellsian recognition of the essential fascism in American corporate life, was to be seen in the spotlight of the movie projector, only Rawlston's voice (and at a respectful level, Thompson's) was of any importance.

I think it fair to say that Welles would have been satisfied if the entire screen had been pitch black with only Rawlston looming up in the light, the underlings, like so many motes, in the projector's beam. Only Rawlston's voice booming out with bored cynicism his orders. Nobody really counted but the Leader, the Decider.

[A character named Rawlston immediately reminded me as a boy, in 1941, when I first saw CITIZEN KANE, of Rawlston's Cereals, which were among the biggest sponsors of children's serials on Radio at the time: "When it's roundup time in Texas . . ." Putting all of us "little doggies" into the corral, to wait for our Hero Tom Mix. Straight Shooter Mix took care of everything, and if you sent in enough boxtops, you got mailed to you a photo of Tom and his horse, framed by "silver rope," which sat on our piano top for years.]

[And you know, most of these recognition problems in "the screening room sequence" can be solved by simply bringing up the black level, adjusting downward the "light" on your TV controls. Your TV will function better and longer, if you do!]

Glenn