Orson Welles' masterwork (#1 in the American Film Institute's list of Best American Movies) dazzles anew in a superb 70th-anniversary high-definition digital transfer. Its grand entertainment, sharply acted (starting many of Welles' Mercury Players on the road to thriving film careers) and directed with inspired visual flair. Chronicling the stormy life of an influential publishing tycoon, this Best Original Screenplay Academy Award winner (1941) is rooted in themes of power, corruption, vanity the American Dream lost in the mystery of a dying mans last word: Rosebud.
It was a wonderful experience to see this film as a Blue-ray disc, restored carefully, in its pre-3D depth of field experience created by Greg Toland and Welles, with the surround sound adding to it. This baroque extravaganza is still a great cinematic experience - and will remain so - after seventy years of its making, especially for the process of aging of Orson Welles, as the film moves to different periods of his life.