952 The Magnificent Ambersons

[hearthesilence]

The documentary will probably consist of the standard history of the film's troubled post-production, intercut with footage of this guy touring whatever film vaults he can get into, and an interview or two with people who heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that they saw the mythic lost print screened at someone's house in 1965 or whatever. It'll end with the failure to find said print of course, but hope lives on...

I'm trying to imagine the worst ending possible that would be in line with the film's history...how about he finds someone who has the reels and discovers they've been ground up into a bucket of fertilizer particles for their garden?

[reaky]

A plainly-lit two-shot with Grossberg and Martin Scorsese in which, standing before a greenscreen cinema, Grossberg tells Scorsese how he successfully located the lost Ambersons print and that it’s now been released to huge international success. They turn and walk smiling through the cinema entrance.

[Fred Holywell]

The Search for the Lost Print: The Making of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons

[J Wilson]

The documentary will probably consist of the standard history of the film's troubled post-production, intercut with footage of this guy touring whatever film vaults he can get into, and an interview or two with people who heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that they saw the mythic lost print screened at someone's house in 1965 or whatever. It'll end with the failure to find said print of course, but hope lives on...

I'm trying to imagine the worst ending possible that would be in line with the film's history...how about he finds someone who has the reels and discovers they've been ground up into a bucket of fertilizer particles for their garden?

I think the worst possible endings would be either 1) he finds the print, but it's completely rotted into an unwatchable, unrestorable mess from years of poor storage (we are given a couple excruciatingly tantalizing frames of missing scenes with Bill Morrisonesque rot), or 2) he finds the film can, they excitedly cue it up to watch, and it's actually a print of Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost

[FrauBlucher]

Baldwin and Friedkin are joining the hunt

[FrauBlucher]

A clue of some kind has turned up in the old RKO Rio office.

[therewillbeblus]

A clue of some kind has turned up in the old RKO Rio office.

Since they decided to make the expedition into a doc, the cynic in me assumes this social media post is really just preliminary advertising for that, but here's to hoping

[FrauBlucher]

Agreed. I have my doubt's anything substantial will turn up. But interesting nonetheless

[Roger Ryan]

A clue of some kind has turned up in the old RKO Rio office.

Since they decided to make the expedition into a doc, the cynic in me assumes this social media post is really just preliminary advertising for that, but here's to hoping

The expedition wouldn't have been funded unless something concrete would have come out of it. A documentary is that concrete thing. Director Josh Grossberg has been upfront about the fact this he is producing a documentary about the fate of the initial 131 minute edit of Ambersons and, as part of that documentary, six weeks would be spent searching for the print and researching related information in Brazil. The social media post also doesn't exist in isolation; it is part of a string of posts Grossberg is posting documenting the Brazilian trip. Personally, I think it's pretty cool to see a document which shows that the RKO Brazil office changed hands in 1950, so I'm happy to see these posts without the expectation that there has to be a major find for this to be worthwhile.

[rrenault]

Is it me, or does South America always end being ground zero for "long lost prints" that end up being the missing link in an effort to complete new restorations? It was a similar situation with Metropolis and I think La Dolce Vita.

[Drucker]

Really just a coincidence. Welles went to Brazil following Ambersons to film what became It's All True and RKO mailed a print to him. As a counter-example, Passion of Joan of Arc was discovered in Oslo.

[therewillbeblus]

k

[Matt]

...

[black&huge]

???

[FrauBlucher]

Comment cards from the previews... 80 years later, enjoy

[Roger Ryan]

Comment cards from the previews... 80 years later, enjoy

I've often thought that the comment "It's as bad if not worse than Citizen Kane" may be the most telling. While his notoriety as a personality was popularly acknowledged, Welles' tastes prevented him from creating popular entertainments. As RKO president George Schaefer noted in a telegram to Welles shortly after the previews, it's "expensive to educate the public". Reading these comment cards, you can feel the division in the audience as the handful of viewers who championed the film express their anger with the viewers who were jeering it. Eighty years later, the same thing plays out over message boards and Twitter with "go watch your Transformers movies" comments.

[Finch]

I keep thinking why the hell RKO thought it was a smart move to preview Ambersons to teenagers? Granted, some of the more mature audiences also complained about the film not being the escapism they were looking for, but still, this film was never designed for kids so why would you look for their feedback? You don't test Sonic the Hedgehog movies with audiences over 60, do you?

[hearthesilence]

IIRC, as a compromise, Schaefer wanted to deposit a copy of the "director's" cut (or I'm assuming the 131-minute workprint cut) with MoMA's archive while moving forward with the shorter, partially re-shot theatrical cut. Still crappy, but in the long run, it would have been most welcome to say the least. I was never clear on why the rest of RKO refused to even make this concession. Anyone know?

[Drucker]

I had thought it was MOMA that requested the workprint cut, and that RKO execs refused.

[Roger Ryan]

I believe the story is that David O. Selznick recommended RKO provide a copy of the initial edit* (and the 131 min. version was really more advanced than what we usually consider a "workprint" given it contained finished optical effects and a full score) to MoMA, but it's really just anecdotal. Standard studio policy at the time was to dispose of anything that wasn't the final, studio-approved version. Schaefer didn't have any special appreciation of the initial edit; he just wanted to start recouping the money invested as soon as possible, hoping to release it for Easter, 1942. Had the previews gone swimmingly, that's probably what would have happened, although it's unlikely the film would have done any better at the box office than it did.

*What should be considered the "initial edit" is complicated by the fact that the first previewed version was about twenty minutes shorter than the 131 min. edit completed about a week or so earlier - missing all of the footage regarding the confrontation between Isabel and George over Eugene's letter and their subsequent trip to Europe among a couple of other excisions (all at Welles' insistence). The cutting of so much footage hadn't sat well with editor Robert Wise, so after the first bad preview, he reinstated much of that footage for the second preview.

[domino harvey]

I keep thinking why the hell RKO thought it was a smart move to preview Ambersons to teenagers? Granted, some of the more mature audiences also complained about the film not being the escapism they were looking for, but still, this film was never designed for kids so why would you look for their feedback? You don't test Sonic the Hedgehog movies with audiences over 60, do you?

As it says in the article, the studio believed the younger audience were the ones who’d spend the most at the box office, so appeal to them was necessary to recoup costs. I did a long research project in college into youth film clubs in conjunction with the NBR and their tastes weren’t always as juvenile as this reaction might lead you to believe (though I think the chastisement of the audience from other audience members tells pretty loudly just how vocal this audience was in their ignorance)

[hearthesilence]

Silly RKO, they picked the wrong youth clique! In all seriousness, I can remember a specific group of kids in high school who were really into stuff like Merchant-Ivory films, but they weren't the same ones binging on Adam Sandler comedies, that's for sure.

[FrauBlucher]

You’d think that RKO had a margin of error so to speak considering this was on the heels of the divisiveness of Kane. What were their expectations?

I found it interesting that some of the preview cards criticized the camera shots and the look.

[Roger Ryan]

... I found it interesting that some of the preview cards criticized the camera shots and the look.

That does seem odd as the cinematography in Ambersons is less "showy" than in Kane. I assume these comments came from audience members unfamiliar with Welles' debut feature. If that was the case, the cinematography in Ambersons may have seemed radical compared to more standard fare. Still, criticizing the look of a film ("the guy who directed this was camera crazy") can be a flippant way of dismissing something the viewer felt frustrated with. The reactions to shots being "too dark" really just comes down to taste: what some see as haunting and dynamic is seen as unnecessarily gloomy and pretentious by others.

[colinr0380]

Interesting to note that the Dorothy Lamour film The Fleet's In, that Ambersons was apparently double-billed with and compared as unfavourably dour to in its test screening, is the final film of Victor Schertzinger (who died of a heart attack three months before the film was released) who has a film in the Criterion Collection with that 1939 adaptation of The Mikado.