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There is a fascinating article on the Citizen Kane trailer in the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Volume 15, No. 2.
The article runs from pages 96 to 113, and is the first article to my knowledge to�focus on�a Welles trailer. The author remarks that only recently are trailers becoming understood as works of art themselves. I can recall seeing several Welles trailers over the years: Kane, Ambersons, Shanghai, Touch of Evil, a crazy Desilu trailer for the tv presentation of the Trial, and of course the infamous F For Fake extravaganza: perhaps the longest trailer in film history.
It’s certainly an untilled area; info about the article (which is by Paul Salmon) can be found here:
Here is the abstract for the article:
�The People will think… what I tell them to think�: Orson Welles and the Trailer for Citizen Kane
�by Paul Salmon
�The trailer for Citizen Kane is now impossible to appreciate outside of a context shaped by decades of Welles scholarship and by the entrenched canonical status of Citizen Kane itself. Yet, it warrants sustained attention in its own right. The highly manipulative nature of its rhetorical strategies suggest the importance that Welles placed on courting a wide, popular audience on the eve of unveiling the most technically and formally advanced film in Hollywood history. A close analysis of the trailer suggests that Welles was deeply ambivalent about how far to risk alienating a mass audience, and equally ambivalent about the role of collaboration in the artistic enterprise.
And here’s the Kane trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyv19bg0scg
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