Classics, sequels, noir, and guilty pleasures.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.
• Position: Entertainment - DVD releases

AS DVD CONTINUES to make inroads in the video market, with prices dropping to make the discs more and more attractive as collectibles, the flood of new releases is becoming split between appealing to wide audiences and catering to niche viewers. Certain movies are selling in the millions within days of release, "Shrek" being the most recent example. Others are finding more modest reception, but still strong enough to warrant studios opening up their vaults and issuing them in DVD format.

CLASSICS

Citizen Kane (Warner Home Video, 119 minutes, $29.99), voted the number-one picture of all time on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest American Movies, is out in a monumental two-disc 60th anniversary release that no serious film buff will be able to resist. The movie itself--in a spanking new print remastered digitally to clean up the sound and picture to sparkling brilliance--warrants the purchase. Add in the special features, and this may be the video to have for collectors, film-lovers, or those discovering Orson Welles' masterpiece for the first time. Disc one features the movie and a pair of audio commentaries, one by film critic Roger Ebert, the other by writer/director Peter Bogdanovich, a longtime Welles enthusiast and biographer of Hollywood's enfant terrible. By the time they are through analyzing the film and Welles, there is barely a frame in the picture that has not been exhaustively parsed. An extra added attraction is a newsreel of the 1941 premiere, plus a smorgasbord of storyboards, production photos, studio correspondence, trailers, and assorted memorabilia. Disc two primarily is devoted to a two-hour documentary, "The Battle Over Citizen Kane" highlighting the efforts of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst--who title character Charles Foster Kane is a thinly disguised portrait of--to suppress the film. Interviews with Welles, various costars of the movie, and associates of Hearst and Welles abound, and particularly fascinating are shots of Hearst's San Simeon estate--depicted in the film as Xanadu. Even thrown in is footage from Welles' radio show, "The War of the Worlds," which virtually panicked an entire nation into believing that Earth was being invaded by killer Martians. Obviously, "Citizen Kane" is more than a mystery about "Rosebud"!

The Criterion Collection from Home Vision. Entertainment is a lovingly restored assemblage of many of the world's classic movies. While not all of them are commercial successes in these high-volume times, each is a valued piece of cinematic heritage that more than warrants preservation for the ages. A quartet taken at random is ample evidence of the quality of the collection.

Seven Samurai (207 minutes, $39.95) seamlessly blends the talents of two of Japan's towering figures--director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune--in the epic story of a small village that hires the title characters to protect it from marauding bandits. If the plot line sounds familiar, it should. It's the basis of the wildly popular Yul Brynner-Steve McQueen western, "The Magnificent Seven," and varied and sundry sequels and TV series. The movie is uncompromisingly shown in Japanese with English subtitles, making the audio commentary by film historian Michael Jeck welcome.

Rififi (118 minutes, $29.95) is arguably the prototype for innumerable caper movies. Written and directed by blacklisted American director Jules Dassin, who costars as well, the picture crackles with suspense as it follows four ex-cons preparing for, then executing, the robbery of a Parisian jewelry store. The actual...