Preliminary Magnificent Ambersons DVD info on amazon.com

[Dan]

No release date or DVD specifics. But if you go to the link below, and have an amazon.com account, you can request to be notified when a released date is announced.

Ambersons DVD info on amazon.com

[Roger Ryan]

Welcome to the board, Dan! Thanks for the link, but truth be told, this Amazon listing has been in place for nearly ten years! I personally signed up to be notified seven years ago...I wonder if Amazon will actually send me an email when the release date is announced?

[Dan]

Unusual. Amazon usually puts up a preliminary page a few months before a an expected release. Ambersons is due on DVD sometime in 2008.

[Glenn Anders]

Some will remember reports here of a February 27, 2006 "chat" with Warner Brothers executives about various films they were preparing for DVD release. Warner's had held out from restoring and releasing much of their collection until they were sure of the longevity of the DVD format. This chat was designed to assure fans and collectors that the time had come. One of the participants, our own Jeff Wilson, raised a question about the Welles films which are part of Warner's old RKO film library holdings:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/chat/warner07.txt

A summary provided of the discussion contained this intriguing statement:

"Elements for The Magnificent Ambersons has been found and that film and Journey into Fear will be released in 2008. Alternate European cuts will be included for Journey into Fear. . . ."

Your remark, Dan, reminds me that the other night, Baesen and I were at the Castro Theater in San Francisco, where William Friedkin was interviewed, introducing a restrospective of his work, preparatory for a Warner Brothers' launch of a DVD set of his films.

Friedkin invoked the name of Orson Welles several times.

At one point in the interview, referring primarily to a technically superb new restoration of his 1980 film, CRUISING, Friedkin began to praise what he called "the real heroes" of the present day film industry, the heads of the DVD departments of the various studios. He said that some of them had been able make amazing restorations, after poring through the dusty collections in their studio vaults. Some of these lost treasures had been placed there by "assistant producers" who had quietly neglected to carry out orders to destroy among the greatest treasures in the history of Cinema.

For instance, he said, such an assistant producer [at RKO?] had been ordered to destroy the original of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. He had simply had the footage labeled "Welles' films," and placed on a shelf in the vault. Friedkin noted that IT'S ALL TRUE had been similarly hidden away, discovered years later and restored.

Now it may be that Friedkin was only gathering his thoughts, that he was really talking just about IT'S ALL TRUE. [Baesen attempted to ask a clarifying question, but found himself passed over.] But because Friedkin is married to Sherry Lansing, former production head of Paramount, who should be in the know, and because Warner's is bringing out Friedkin's DVD release package, the anecdote suggests some tantalizing possibilities.

I remember that Rick Schmidlin, restorer of TOUCH OF EVIL, told some us a few years ago that he was "sending a man to Rio" to explore and negotiate for missing elements of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. He said at that time that he was "meeting with Warner's next week to discuss it."

As always, we shall have to wait and see.

Glenn

[Dan]

Sounds like Friedkin is getting the "It's All True" story confused with the missing Amersons footage which by all accounts is lost. Because if Friedkin was referring to Ambersons then we would have had the lost footage years ago.

As I said in an earlier post if Warner did indeed by some bizarre miracle find a complete print they may announce it closer to the 2008 DVD release date. Again - extremely doubtful but stuff has turned up fifty years later. Has anybody looked in Merv Griffin's basement?

[RayKelly]

I finally got around to watching the original trailer for The Magnificent Ambersons. I don't know why I didn't check it out long ago.
Good God, what a lurid sell job.
It was great to see a brief glimpse of the lost boarding house scene. I looped it and watched those two seconds of Cotten's shadow passing over Moorehead in the rocking chair more times than I want to admit.
Here's the link if you haven't seen it before:
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index/?cid=14260

[jbrooks]

Thanks, RayKelly, for the link. I'd never seen the trailer before. That's Ray Collins doing the voice-over, isn't it? Funny how he then mentions "Ray Collins as Uncle Jack the black sheep of the family" without mentioning that that's him. And particularly funny since Uncle Jack isn't a black sheep but a respected former Congressman. Oh well.

Too bad the boarding house shot is so brief. But you do get a sense for how Moorhead played the scene.

In regards to the Friedkin quote above, didn't I read somewhere that he searched Paramount's vaults for Ambersons footage when his wife took over the studio? I can't recall exactly, but I seem to remember something about that.

[mido505]

Has all the IT'S ALL TRUE footage been inspected? I have always had the sneaking suspicion that AMBERSON elements had been inadvertently (purposely?) mixed in with the TRUE stuff when it was all shipped back from Brazil.

[Roger Ryan]

Has all the IT'S ALL TRUE footage been inspected? I have always had the sneaking suspicion that AMBERSON elements had been inadvertently (purposely?) mixed in with the TRUE stuff when it was all shipped back from Brazil.

That's an interesting idea, but I doubt the "Ambersons" print sent to Welles in Brazil came back with the "It's All True" footage (or, if it did, it might have been among the reels reportedly tossed into the ocean!). As I understand it, not all of the "True" footage on hand has even been developed, but the "Ambersons" print would have been a complete, processed 16mm print, right? Therefore, I imagine it would have been easily spotted by Welles, Richard Wilson, Paramount, Catherine Benamou, etc. in the ensuing years.

[mido505]

I've been slogging through Benamou's book. She is very comprehensive, but it is tough going cutting through the jargon and pointless references to academic theory in order to get to the relevant facts. She gives a very thorough accounting of the remaining IAT footage in an appendix. According to her, the only footage actually destroyed was 200,000 feet of Technicolor nitrate negative of the CARNAVAL episode, junked only in the late 60's or early 70's. Remaining CARNAVAL footage consists of 26 reels of B&W negative; also one reel of color positive, and seven reels of B&W positive taken from the destroyed Technicolor negative exists. To give you an idea of the slow process of preservation, at the time of Benamou's accounting, year 2000 or so, out of 35,530 feet of surviving B&W nitrate negative of CARNAVAL, 3,330 feet have been preserved, leaving 32,200 feet to go. In 2000 28,000 feet of JANGADEIROS remained unpreserved, and 67,145 feet of MY FRIEND BONITO. That's a lot of footage. What I would like to know is simple: has all that upreserved footage been examined? If not, it would be easy for 16mm reels of AMBERSONS to be sitting there, especially if the cans were mislabeled. Am I correct in assuming that Welles, especially towards the end of the shoot, when money ran out, shot a bunch of IAT in 16mm?

[Tony]

Mido: the whole point of Benamou's book is the theories she's discussing; Welles is just part of a much bigger fish she's frying, as she's a Latin America specialist with specific interests. Calling her method 'jargon' and 'pointless' is, I think, missing her point. She's the greatest living specialist, probably the greatest specialist ever on IAT, and she sees it through the prism of those theories.

Here's what she's currently up to, in brief:


Fields of Study: Latino/a and Latin American film and television; politics and aesthetics of inter-American representation; Spanish-language television and its Latina/o Diasporic audiences; Orson Welles and off-Hollywood cinema, 1940s-1970s; media ethnography and film historiography.

Secondary Fields of Study: Theory and practice of documentary cinema; comparative ethnic representation in global perspective; cinemas of the Lusodiaspora and the Maghreb region; indigenous media in the hemisphere.

About Catherine Benamou:

CURRENT PROJECTS:

ARCHIVAL:
IT'S ALL TRUE film preservation project, UCLA Film and Televeision Archive.
"Everybody's Orson Welles," in association with the Orson Welles Collections at the University of Michigan Special Collections Library.

COMMUNITY:
Media and Immigration in Latnia/o Detroit

Book in progress: DESTINATION DETROIT, LOS ANGELES, MIAMI, MADRID: TRANSNATIONAL TELEVISION AND ITS LATINA/O DIASPORIC AUDIENCES



As for the un-developed IAT material, I don't think it contains MA, as that was a developed print. What mystifies me is how IAT, the doc, was put together when so much of the material was undeveloped, and hence unseen. Perhaps Richard Wilson knew what was on the reels by looking at them, as he was there for the whole thing (both in 42 and the 80s). I recall that last year CB had some Bonito and Four Men material developed which someone on this site (I think Roger Ryan) saw, and it was apparently repetitive and lacklustere, so perhaps Wilson, Benamou and team did get the cream for IAT 1992.

[The Night Man]

What mystifies me is how IAT, the doc, was put together when so much of the material was undeveloped, and hence unseen. Perhaps Richard Wilson knew what was on the reels by looking at them, as he was there for the whole thing (both in 42 and the 80s). I recall that last year CB had some Bonito and Four Men material developed which someone on this site (I think Roger Ryan) saw, and it was apparently repetitive and lacklustere, so perhaps Wilson, Benamou and team did get the cream for IAT 1992.

Tony, I don't recall if Roger also saw this material, but I certainly did, at a UCLA preservation festival screening last year.

The Bonito material fell into two categories: the first was a sequence in which the boy watches as his favorite bull is branded. It was all in the form of rushes - that is, unedited raw footage, no selected takes. It looked stupendous, definitely not lackluster. The notes from the screening indicate that "the cameraman is probably Alex Phillips, who did the cinematography for many Mexican Golden Age feature films." Whover it was, the photography was excellent. The notes go on to say "This reel was preserved in 1989 from nitrate negative rushes under the supervision of Richard Wilson." (approx. 20 min.)

The second sequence was footage of cows being tested for their bravery, filmed at the La Punta ranch in Jalisco. This material was repetitive and lackluster - seemingly endless documentary-style shots of matadors vs. cows (not bulls). The notes indicate the material is "from a rough assemblage... by Jose Noriega under Orson Welles' supervision." (approx. 15 min.)

The reel from Four Men on a Raft was "from a rough assemblage... under the supervision of Orson Welles in the early 1940s." This was not lackluster, either. It was material from the reenactment of the Jangadeiros entering Guanabara Bay and it looked great. Several of the gentlemen who were responsible for It's All True were sitting directly behind me and I heard them say quite clearly that they would have used some of this material, but Wilson did not show it to them. (approx. 10 min.)

[Tony]

Night Man:

I appreciate your expressing your point of view; it was Roger who expressed real dissappointment; here is the post I was referring to:

Roger Ryan
Wellesnet Veteran


Joined: 08 Apr 2004
Posts: 359

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 4:03 pm Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I talked briefly with Ms. Benamou about this in early December. It requires quite a bit of money to develop and/or transfer all the footage to usable safety stock and that money has apparently only been forthcoming in drips and drabs. She commented that much of footage exists as small mags of film (probably 10 minutes in length or less) stored together in larger film reel cases, making it difficult to catalog what's available and to prioritize footage for preservation.

As McBride noted in his book, some of the money raised was used to transfer and preserve raw footage of various watercraft cruising around the Rio harbor (shot for the scene when the jangadeiros arrive on their raft), and some of it was used to transfer and preserve raw footage from the "My Friend Bonito" segment. The Rio harbor footage was shown in Locarno in 2005 and I would describe it as only marginally interesting (repeated takes of boats docking, etc.). The "Bonito" footage was not screened at the Locarno conference because, reportedly, the largely B-roll footage of bulls in training was even duller. This could very well have been a situation of not knowing what footage you have until you spend the time and money to develop and transfer it. With this in mind, I can understand the difficulty in raising the money to preserve more of these reels.


In any case, I think the material should all be preserved, for preserving Welles's work and also for Latin american culture, but I'm affaid it's very late in the day. However, the person who is doing the most to try and save it is Catherine Benamou.

[mido505]

Tony:

Just because I am not a fan of Catherine Benamou's writing style does not mean that I do not recognize and honor the scope and import of her essential book. She is, without a doubt, the last word on IAT, and her Herculean efforts to preserve that film cannot be praised enough. I simply find her a tough read, as I am personally impatient with theory, wanting to get straight to the facts, which she has uncovered and reported so admirably. But that is neither here nor there; this tread is about MA, and contains a revelatory post by Glenn Anders. When he writes that he and Todd Baesen both heard William Friedkin, a great filmmaker, a devoted Welles enthusiast, and husband of Sherry Lansing, former production head of Paramount, which controls the old RKO library, state that the original AMBERSONS has been found, I take that very seriously indeed. Anders and Baesen were unable to follow up, and Anders suggests that perhaps Friedkin was confusing MA and IAT, but Anders reports that Friedkin referenced IAT as having been similiarly thought lost and then found, so I think the possibility that Friedkin was not confused, and meant exactly what he said, deserves our profound attention.

I am simply trying to imagine a scenario in which this possibility could be a reality. With regards to IAT, Catherine Benamou is very clear, in numerous sections of her book, that the surviving IAT footage is both undeveloped nitrate negative, and developed positive. Of course, both would be subject to deterioration over the years, and require restoration. So the positive print of MA could easily be in there, if all the IAT footage has not been viewed and catalogued. So I am trying to get an answer to the question: has all the IAT footage been viewed and catalogued? Also, the MA workprint was 16mm. So my next question is, was some of IAT shot in 16mm?

The Roger Ryan post that you quote seems to shed light on both these questions. " I talked briefly with Ms. Benamou about this in early December...She commented that much of footage exists as small mags of film (probably 10 minutes in length or less) stored together in larger film reel cases, making it difficult to catalog what's available and to prioritize footage for preservation."

"Small mags" makes me think 16mm. "(M)aking it difficult to catalog what's available and to prioritize footage for preservation" makes me think that not all the footage has been inspected and viewed. So the possibility exists that MA was in there, and that Friedkin was correct in revealing that somebody finally found it. That's all.

[Dan]

Until Warner Home Video announces exactly what is meant by having found "good elements" for the upcoming 2008 Ambersons DVD release, we can speculate here forever.

Link to the original 02/26/2007 chat:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/022607htfchat.html