80 years ago, a brilliant young man named Orson Welles finished his second motion picture The Magnificent Ambersons based on the novel by Booth Tarkington, only to have it taken from his hands at the post-production stage.
To cut a very long and convoluted story very short, the studio eventually cut about 45 minutes from the original version, rearranged and edited the scenes and audio elements, infamously filmed the additional material and tacked on something of a happy ending – basically did everything imaginable in an attempt to shape an avant-garde work of art into a standard Hollywood picture of the day, while Welles was deployed to Brazil, filming the ill-fated documentary It’s All True.
The film in its final mutilated form was eventually released in July 1942, and as it was a common practice of the day, all the cut material was subsequently destroyed, making the original version of the Magnificent Ambersons something of a cinematic Holy Grail.
It is August 2022 now.
At the moment, there are two ongoing efforts to restore the picture to its unseen Wellesian glory – the search for the answer print famously sent to Welles in Rio in March 1942 led by Josh Grossberg and his documentary team, and the Ambersons Project by Brian Rose who is independently working on restoration of the missing scenes through animation.
Whatever the outcomes of both of these efforts may be, the question remains – why are out there people who still care so much for a movie made and unmade almost a century ago?
I can think about three major reasons, the first one being our cultural obsession with ruins and the mystery that surrounds them. At this point, The Magnificent Ambersons is the Parthenon of our time, a magnificent ruin of something even more magnificent that we know once existed. We want to touch it, feel it, experience it as it was in its heyday.
Over the years, everyone who knew anything about this story tried to locate the lost scenes, or at least, tried to understand what happened in spring/summer 1942 between RKO and Welles and hopefully catch an overlooked detail that would open the case and point to the possibility of the long version somehow still surviving. There have been countless of these Ambersons searchers, more or less familiar with the Welles lore and the movie industry practices of the 1940s, over the years and it seems that there are even more of them now. Everybody wants to be a part of a story like this.
However, a miraculous find of the long cut would also mean the end of this dream, which resonates with the theme of this film and practically everything else that Orson Welles made in a very strange way, so the rhetorical question remains: do we want to find the lost movie, or are we in love with the idea of finding it?
Another reason is that we know that Orson did make another masterpiece.
The surviving cutting continuity (a textual document explaining the on-screen action) of the pre-release version and the surviving stills clearly show that Welles’ version was something way more profound and considerably more subversive, albeit in very subtle ways, than the released version ended up being, while the original score by Bernard Herrmann (also butchered by the studio) is a reminder of the carefully built structure of the movie that we have never seen.
The third reason is rather metaphysical, but possibly the most important – it is the end of our world.
Whether we are aware of this or not, the way of life that we knew and loved or hated before the pandemic hit is dead and gone and we are on the cusp of dramatic changes, not unlike the ones depicted in the Ambersons. Their world was destroyed by the horseless carriages, our world is getting destroyed by the depletion of the energy that made the horseless carriages run. Everybody is getting their comeuppance in the end and it seems that we need something as strong as the original Ambersons to remind us that nothing stays or holds or keeps where there is growth.
In 2022/2023, Joshua Grossberg will complete his documentary on the production of the Magnificent Ambersons and Welles’ work in Brazil (I have read everything released about this period and that story, essentially the one about the killing of Welles’ career in Hollywood, needs to be told).
He may even find the lost print, although I have a hunch that, if it exists at all, it will be found after his expedition. Don’t really know why, but that just sounds about right in the world of Orson Welles.
Brian Rose is close to completion of his restoration, a labour of love done independently and without the backing of the rights holders, but I imagine that it will find its way to the wider audiences once it is completed.
This means that we live in the Ambersons times and that we are, one way or another, close to experiencing the original version, 80 years after its (un)making.
Yet, I don’t think that Welles was ahead of
his time. I believe that he really understood life and knew how to convey the
eternal truths, and some of those truths may be unpleasant. This is the main reason why his career was burdened by
all kinds of troubles and this is the reason why we still care.
The Magnificent Ironies
There was never a Director’s Cut
Although we refer to the lost 131 min. cut as the original version, there was no such thing.
As far as Welles was concerned, the film was never locked (I am doing my best to avoid the term unfinished in relation to Welles) and still required some tweaks and edits.
However, there is no doubt that it was his vision, unlike the existing 88 cut.
The movie, as Welles had shot it, could not have happened in 1942
Welles’ version was a complex and ultimately dark story about social and cultural changes caused by industrialization, at least on the surface. Underneath, it was an even more disturbing tale about the breakdown of communication, people and personal relationships. It was the last thing that was going to get released during the WW2, unless Welles had the final cut privilege.
While some people believe that Welles would have somehow gotten his way had he not been away in Brazil, alas, his geographic location would have made little to no difference, as he no longer had the final cut and, lest we forget, most of the studio management despised him at this point.
It was clearly stipulated in his contract with RKO that he was to complete the preview version of the movie and that afterwards he would have to edit it as directed by the studio. (As a keen reader would notice, RKO actually breached this stipulation as Welles never really completed the picture.)
In other words, it would be another Lady from Shanghai situation at best – Welles himself would need to butcher the movie, which takes us to the ultimate irony – if the answer print sent to Rio is somehow found in the viewable shape, we would have the privilege of seeing an Orson Welles production of The Magnificent Ambersons precisely because the studio destroyed it and precisely because Welles was not in Hollywood at the time.
Rather Wellesian, isn’t it?
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