Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons

[tpfkabi]

I love Citizen Kane. I want to see TMA so bad. I've read a little about it. The suits got into this film big time, chopping it all up and reshooting things. I read they cut one long scene where Welles had the camera man strap a big camera on him (remember there was no Stedicam til around The Shining) and walk all through the house, room to room. Like Kane, he had the sets set up so table, chairs, etc, would move out of the way so the camera could glide along effortlessly.
anywho, i saw somewhere that they did a remake recently, but i've heard its crap. anyone had the chance to see this film (the original that is)? i hope they make a DVD version like they did with CK.

[©brad]

i remember watching a clip of this freshman year in class when i was a little cbrad. don't remember it really though.

[cine]

I, too, have been waiting for The Magnificent Ambersons to be released on DVD. I know you can buy the VHS on Amazon, but I'm sure it'll come out soon... I bought Fassbinder's "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" for a good price off ebay and now I'm sort of regretting it because Criterion is releasing it in the summer. *sigh*

[MacGuffin]

The daughter of Orson Welles is suing two Hollywood studios, saying they should either pay her royalties on her father's masterpiece "Citizen Kane" or hand over the rights to the movie.

Beatrice Welles says in the lawsuit filed in federal court that a 1944 agreement discovered by an archivist appears to terminate a 1939 profit-sharing deal the filmmaker signed with RKO Pictures.

Welles' lawyer, Steven Ames Brown, said his client either owns the rights under the 1944 agreement or is owed royalties if the earlier deal is still valid.

Brown said the judge must decide whether the 1944 agreement transfers ownership rights.

The suit, which names RKO and Turner Entertainment Co. as defendants, says Welles is also owed money on another of her father's films, "The Magnificent Ambersons."

Brown said the statute of limitations allows his client only to seek royalties from the past four years, an amount that would still come to several hundred thousand dollars from DVD and rental revenues alone.

He said that Welles had a 20 percent profit participation agreement for "Citizen Kane" and a 25 percent stake in "The Magnificent Ambersons."

Jonathan Marshall, an RKO spokesman, said the company had not yet seen Welles' suit and could not comment. But he said the company would be looking to resolve the case amicably.

"We've had a good working relationship with Beatrice Welles, and we would hope we would have one going forward," he said.

Beatrice Welles, 47, a cosmetics company executive who lives in Nevada, is Orson Welles' child with his third wife, actress Paola Mori. He also has a daughter from his marriage to actress Rita Hayworth, and a son with his first wife, Virginia Nicholson.

[tpfkabi]

well, i guess that means it will be a while.

i doubt anyone knows, but i wonder if Welles' original cut of TMA is anywhere? i read a little bit on it. i read that the beginning of The Royal Tenenbaums was inspired by the beginning of TMA. I read a little bit about the filming of snow scenes. Originally they used fake snow, but Welles wasn't having it. He got them to use actually ice. I picture the camera through the house shot that i talked about earlier being something like the shot in Eyes Wide Shut.....minus all the orgies and naked chicks.....i read it was to show the emptiness of a big house.

Buttttt, has anyone actually seen it? How does it compare to CK?

[MacGuffin]

i doubt anyone knows, but i wonder if Welles' original cut of TMA is anywhere?

Ambersons' public previews (in Pomona, California) were considered a disaster due to its being inappropriately double-billed with a light Dorothy Lamour musical called The Fleet's In (1942), and its original depressing ending. Worried about its financial viability and the unreleasable nature of the film, RKO studios, in Welles' absence while he was in Brazil, proceeded to drastically cut the film, from its originally-edited, first-cut length of 131 minutes down to a mere 88 minutes of both original and reshot footage. More than 50 minutes of original footage were removed - over a third of Welles' original footage, by shortening extended tracking shots, and eliminating or drastically abbreviating other scenes. With a tacked-on, optimistic ending, and with the addition of rewritten/reshot portions of film without the director's approval (under the supervision of editor Robert Wise), it was re-released, and all surviving footage from the original film was destroyed (to prevent any efforts at reconstruction).



The Criterion laserdisc (which I am a proud owner of) has a feature called "The Lost Ambersons" which includes video clips of Welles discussing the new ending of the film, Welles' own copy of the complete script and storyboards of the complete film.

[bonanzataz]

that's sad.

[cine]

Yeah, its depressing to think of original film of a classic destroyed like that. I wouldn't have the guts to do it.. not to something Welles made. You can't be human to be able to do that.

[tpfkabi]

yeah, i agree. that shows what happens when you make a movie kinda about a guy with a lot of power. it's such a shame. after that controversy they never gave WElles total control. Touch of Evil got screwed around too. i couldn't even imagine the type of films he would have made had someone given total control to him.

[MacGuffin]

i couldn't even imagine the type of films he would have made had someone given total control to him.

"Don Quixote" would've been one.

[Sigur Rós]

Do you guys know what Citizen Kane was called in Danish: "Den Store Mand" in english that means "The Big Man"........Do anyone agree with me when I say this sounds like a bad porn movie.....???  

[Ravi]

Do you guys know what Citizen Kane was called in Danish: "Den Store Mand" in english that means "The Big Man"........Do anyone agree with me when I say this sounds like a bad porn movie.....???  

"Xanadu me hard!"

[ono]

Alright, quick question about this movie: I wanted to check out the Welles version of this (the legit one, obviously), but a little oversight by me, and the librarian, and I was given the A&E 2000 DVD version.  Is it worth watching, or just a total waste of time?  Doesn't seem to have very good marks on IMDb, and I wanted the Welles version anyway.  Such a silly oversight.

[Fernando]

Alright, quick question about this movie: I wanted to check out the Welles version of this (the legit one, obviously), but a little oversight by me, and the librarian, and I was given the A&E 2000 DVD version.  Is it worth watching, or just a total waste of time?  Doesn't seem to have very good marks on IMDb, and I wanted the Welles version anyway.  Such a silly oversight.

You know, I haven't seen either Welles' film nor the remake, but I strongly advise you to not see the remake, I mean, why get to know the story from a remake when the original is available? Also the original has always been labeled as a Masterpiece, so, for your own good don't watch it.

[jeremyll]

well, i guess that means it will be a while.

i doubt anyone knows, but i wonder if Welles' original cut of TMA is anywhere?

Buttttt, has anyone actually seen it? How does it compare to CK?

First of all, the second question...it's aptly named a butchered masterpiece. Visually, especially, individual scenes are unrivalled technically, and absorbing to boot. You'll find the same sense of wonder when you watch some scenes, especially the ballroom sequence,( when the camera seems to follow both dancers and conversations in circles), the snow scene, which is renowned for its composition (it really does look like a Currier & Ives), the kitchen scene, which is absorbing because of its extremely  long take, and other assorted  tidbits. But dramatically, it really does suffer in the last half. The hacking and sawing did terrible damage to the plot line--you get a real hodgepodge.

As for the first question, Vanity Fair did some deep research into the subject. I can recapitulate what I read for you. When Welles was in Brazil, a copy of the original edited movie was shipped to him so he could advise on further cuts, which he did---by telegram. The telegrams were so complex that Wise didn't understand them (or pretended not to understand them), so Wise went ahead with his RKO-approved cutting (butchering). Sometime later, Welles was called  back to the US, and left the copy he had with a trusted associate in Brazil. Some time passed; in 1948, the associate wanted to know from Welles  what to do with the copy. Welles purportedly told him to "destroy it", as he was sick at heart over his most devastating cinematic defeat.

No one knows if Welles' instructions were carried out; the associate was a known avid film collector, and it's more than likely that he simply put the film in his own collection. A respected source swears he saw the whole print in a collection circa 1962. Sometime later (5 or 10 years) when we went to look for it again, it had disappeared.

Looking at all the evidence, it is quite likely that a full  print still exists in Brazil. (Especially taking into account the mindset of a film collector. I ask you---would YOU have destroyed it?). However, the condition of this print is in extreme doubt. It would probably be just a mess of brown sludge, unless it was purposely kept in meticulously good condition. It's just hard to say.

But even the Vanity Fair publishers believe that the existence of the print is "quite likely". Until such time as a collector in Brazil gives up his ill-gotten gains, we won't know...if it has deteriorated into brown sludge, we'll never know anyway.