Wise's & Moss' Role In "Ambersons" Re-Editing

[Glenn Anders]

Frankly, gentlemen, I get tired of these rehashes. Orson Welles, from his experience in the highly competitive media of theater and radio, if not from his (brilliant) handling of interlopers on the CITIZEN KANE set, must have known that he would put in danger his personal vision for THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by flying off to South America. Any of us knows that the simplest project is likely to be realized very differently if we place it in other hands, even with careful instructions, far less a complex group endeavor like a motion picture. IT'S ALL TRUE, nearly as I can tell, from the State Department's point of view, was to be a nice little documentary introduction scheduled for six weeks, several months at most,, not an epic history of South America that Welles labored over for more than half a year. Unlike THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, which was taken out of his hands and slashed, or MR. ARKADIN, which was re-edited, both THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and JOURNEY INTO FEAR were abandoned, left to the taste of philistines. Welles should not have been surprised at the results.

A key element which others have pointed out is that previously Welles had relied on the judgment and skills of John Houseman, who had often stepped in masterfully to take the place of his partner. After the fight prior to the start of CITIZEN KANE, and the completion of his obligations in the staging of Native Son, Houseman was no longer on the scene. Jack Moss was no adequate substitute. The finished product, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, to my mind, is a mess, a beautiful mess, but still a mess. The picture is the ghost of a masterpiece, one with a number of beautiful sequences, but also all sorts of continuity problems and an almost universally agreed dreadful, tacked on ending.

If you offer me, without a ton of special pleading, the opportunity of watching THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and KING'S ROW (a film similar in theme, style, vision), I'll reluctantly conclude when the lights come up that KING'S ROW is the better picture. Most people, I think, would agree with me. If there is to be no triumphant discovery of the legendary 131 minute 16mm cut of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS in that film vault outside of Rio, we should own up to the fact that THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS we have is a tragic failure.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Well, this is a point of view I've certainly never heard of before: KING'S ROW is a better film than THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, and Glenn thinks most people on a Welles forum will agree with him?

I beg to differ, as I seriously doubt any informed Welles viewer would possibly agree with such an opinion, and call KING'S ROW a better film than AMBERSONS, even in it's uncut form!

Part of what is amazing about AMBERSONS, is that even in it's uncut form it is still one of the greatest films of all time... and it did indeed make the top ten films of all time in SIGHT and SOUND's poll of international film critics. I'm sorry to have to tell you this Glenn, but KING'S ROW didn't get a single mention from any critic in the poll.

[Jeff Wilson]

Welles hired Jack Moss to handle his business affairs. Moss allowed Welles' contractually guaranteed final cut to lapse. That is the crux of the issue. It is the lead domino from which nothing else in the whole affair can proceed. At the end of the day, Welles is the one responsible for the failure of Ambersons, but not for Oedipal bullshit or It's All True or anything else - it's a depressingly poor decision in who to trust and rely on. For anyone who hasn't seen it, I've written about this before.

[Glenn Anders]

Todd: No use getting into a dueling opinions match. However, KING'S ROW, based on the work of a minor novelist, tells the story of how a family and a class of people in a Midwestern town are brought low by time and circumstance at the end if the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century. The film has a tragic but upbeat ending. [In other words, both THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and KING'S ROW are very similar films; the former enjoys a greater reputation because of who directed it and because of "the might have been" controversy.] Sam Wood's direction and James Wong Howe's photography are no doubt influenced by THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and CITIZEN KANE. [Howe said as much at a San Francisco Film Society event some years ago, in which he pointed out a "quote" from CITIZEN KANE he used in KING'S ROW.] The characters are very well drawn in KING'S ROW, and the story is emotionally and dramatically satisfying.

In my opinion, KING'S ROW, on the basis of these latter points, is a more fully realized picture on a theme very like that of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS as it now stands. [No one who saw the 131 minute version still alive has come forward to make a judgment here.] Most people (not Wellesnetters now], I think, would agree with me.

You would not, Todd. Fair enough.

* * * * *

Jeff: I would agree with you about Welles' fatal decision to entrust his affairs to Jack Moss (and urge everyone to read your excellent piece on Moss, a "philistine," indeed). I would only add that Jack Moss, for all intents and purposes, was John Houseman's replacement. And yes, that lapse in Welles' judgment is responsible for the tragic failure of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS.

[tonyw]

I wonder if Glenn is playing "Devil's Advocate"?

Certainly, KING'S ROW is a far more coherent and realized film since it is both a Warner Brothers small-town melodrama and survives in its full version. Certainly nobody is now around who has seen the full version of AMBERSONS. However, both in its screenplay and what has survived to date, it is a far more ambitious film putting KING'S ROW into the shade. Generic cowboy actor Tim Holt reveals what he was fully capable of but never asked to show (with the exception of TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, perhaps? and is much better than "Little Ronnie Reagan" as Bette Davis once described him on THE JOHNNY CARSON SHOW. As for Robert Cummins, let the bland lead the bland.

Jeff is correct in mentioning Welles's bad judgment by trusting someone who he thought had his best interests at heart as the Moor did with Iago. Moss's malevolence, as opposed to the "best intentions made-in-hell" attitudes of Joseph Cotten and Robert Wise, definitely fills Welles's definition of Iago as one of those totally evil people one has the misfortune to encounter in one's life.

But, even in its truncated form, as a faint shadow of what it could be, AMBERSONS is far superior to KING'S ROW on all levels.

[Glenn Anders]

tony w: Don't let me off the hook so easily:

". . . even in its truncated form, as a faint shadow of what it could be, AMBERSONS is far superior to KING'S ROW on all levels."

Certain books and films I experienced in my childhood have stayed with me for nearly 70 years. Among the films, I saw CITIZEN KANE, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, KING'S ROW, and KEEPER OF THE FLAME in 1941 and 1942. CITIZEN KANE is of course the touchstone, but the other three share a similar theme and appeal: a suggestion that all is not what it seems. Of the four pictures, CITIZEN KANE, KING'S ROW, and KEEPER OF THE FLAME remain vivid in my memory. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, I can honestly say, as a small town lad, left hardly an impression because, after a brilliant beginning, it began to meander, and ultimately, trailed off into sentimental mush. Repeated viewings of . . . AMBERSONS leaves me with the same impression: a chilly, distant, nostalgic story, uninvolving characters, several fine sequences, one of which really establishes the picture's thesis, and then, a choppy development, ending in sentimentality of the worst kind. Can you imagine the life the heroine is going to have with George, this spoiled, selfish, maimed, failure?

"AMBERSON'S is far superior to KING'S ROW on all levels"?

Well, KING'S ROW, as I say, has an AMBERSONS protagonist who eventually learns a certain amount of humility, which George does not. And frankly, mainly in the dramatic writing and development, Ronald Reagan (in his best role), Robert Cummings, Betty Field, and Ann Sheridan create much more compelling characters than THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS produces. I have not mentioned such superb supporting actors as Claude Rains, Charles Colburn, Judith Anderson, Nancy Coleman, Maria Ospenskaya -- and the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Sam Wood was no Welles, but he was not Ed Wood. James Wong Howe was a superb cinematographer. Casey Robinson was a thoroughly accomplished screenwriter. To my mind, KING'S ROW is really a creditable, indeed, superior counterpart to THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS.

And Jeff Wilson has established that Orson Welles, on this one, must bear the real responsibility for the decisions which ruined "a film that might have been."

[tonyw]

I suppose in the case of your last sentence, Welles trusted Moss "not wisely " but "too well", misquoting OTHELLO.

KING'S ROW is a superior Warner Brothers melodrama with a good cast but Robert Cummings in the lead role?

AMBERSONS with its characters one really does not identify with is "against-the-grain" Hollywood having many parallels with Brecht. It evokes the nature of dominant historical and technological forces sweeping away the fragile representatives of a past world such as the Major, Isobel, and Fanny.

Even if AMBERSONS is a patchwork with an unconvicing ending surely Wise's conclusion evoked that typical happy Hollywood ending which creative directors were forced to do but filmed in a manner to make it ludicrous? I'm not saying that Wise deliberately intended it in this manner but the question you raised about Lucy's future with a post-"come-uppance" George would raise questions in the mind of the audience.

It is great to have an iconoclastic posting from a Glenn of old.

Let us wish for more so that new members of this site can join in and access the many previous postings on this film.

[Roger Ryan]

Even if AMBERSONS is a patchwork with an unconvicing ending surely Wise's conclusion evoked that typical happy Hollywood ending which creative directors were forced to do but filmed in a manner to make it ludicrous? I'm not saying that Wise deliberately intended it in this manner but the question you raised about Lucy's future with a post-"come-uppance" George would raise questions in the mind of the audience.

Although you may only be using Wise as a convenient name to represent forces other than Welles himself, technically the final scenes were directed by assistant director Freddie Fleck and scripted by Moss, Joseph Cotten and Wise. "Scripted" may even be misleading since almost all of the dialogue comes from Welles' boarding house scene (and from the discarded letter scene which ended the original script) which was sourced from Tarkington's novel. Although rushed, the final two scenes are most offensive for being so poorly directed: Lucy gazing beyond the horizon as she walks zombie-like past the camera and Fanny looking heavenward and smiling which is completely at odds with how her character has progressed from the beginning of the film. Wise may have actually made these two scenes play a little better if he had directed them, although it seems that showing Fanny at peace with Eugene and her lot was the only option the studio would have accepted.

I maintain that the reordering of the scenes in the third act dictated by Moss obscures the change in George's character. Welles played this with great subtlety, being careful not to show George as becoming a completely likable angel but allowing him to display a degree of maturity and empathy missing from him earlier in the film. As originally sequenced, George kneels at his mother's empty bed begging for forgiveness after seeing his Uncle off at the train station. This allows for the subsequent scenes showing George attempting to reason with a hysterical Fanny and asking Bronson for a job in a dynamite factory to be seen in a different light: he realizes he is complicit in wrecking his mother's happiness and wishes to make amends by ensuring that Fanny (the last "Amberson" left although she was, ironically, never an Amberson to begin with) is made comfortable. By shifting the "kneeling at the empty bed" scene to later in the film, the subtle change in George's character is not as immediately evident in the Fanny and Bronson scenes. This change in George is what would allow for a reunion with Lucy to be less disturbing. Welles downplayed this anyway by not showing Lucy make the decision to see George in the hospital so the emphasis would be more on the change in social standing of the two non-Ambersons (Eugene and Fanny).

All the same, the oddly incestuous relationship between George and Isabel is mirrored by Lucy's relationship with Eugene and this is stressed in the garden scene between the latter. By reuniting with George, Lucy is attempting to fix something that had gone wrong in a similar way to how George attempts to do well by Fanny. Eugene, likewise, is trying to fix the past by believing he should care for George as if he were his own son. As Welles probably demonstrated in his original "boarding house" ending, these good intentions come too late and ring hollow in the face of what time and circumstance has wrought.

[tonyw]

Good reading, Roger, and you're right I was using "Wise" as shorthand for all the forces who were responsible for the ending.

My Welles material was in another location but I can not imagine Fleck (isn't that a character in the original boarding house scene?) going ahead without Wise giving the go-ahead.

[Roger Ryan]

Good reading, Roger, and you're right I was using "Wise" as shorthand for all the forces who were responsible for the ending.

My Welles material was in another location but I can not imagine Fleck (isn't that a character in the original boarding house scene?) going ahead without Wise giving the go-ahead.

To be honest, once the studio mandated the complete overhaul of the film, I'm not sure who was primarily in charge. We know that Welles wanted Wise in charge prior to the previews...and that he subsequently blamed Wise for much of the film's ruin. However, Moss was the one who instigated much of the new structure (which he had already been contemplating prior to the first previews) and George Schaefer was personally involved in asking for certain scenes to be removed or retained. The studio records show that the only re-shoot that Wise directed was the bedroom confrontation between Isabel and George (and this was confirmed late in life by Wise himself). The first half of the "Fanny by the boiler" scene was reportedly directed by Moss (according to an interview conducted shortly before his passing, Wise thought this was unlikely, but he didn't claim responsibility for it himself). The other major re-shoots (Fanny, George and Jack persuade Eugene to leave without seeing the dying Isabel, Lucy decides to visit George in the hospital and the concluding hospital corridor scene itself) were reportedly all directed by Fleck. I tend to think that Wise was assigned the bedroom scene because it was one that Welles and him had worked on a lot; I suspect the scene had already been shot twice by Welles during principal photography and we know that Welles specifically asked Wise to shoot a third version of it (the one where George finds Isabel unconscious). Ultimately, Wise was the editor and he had his hands full doing the re-cutting so it's logical that the assistant director would handle most of the re-shoots. Regardless of whether Wise would have done a better job directing the last two scenes himself, he worked with the material he was given and, presumably, found it acceptable.

...And, yes, "Mr. Fleck" is the name of the gentleman in the boarding house scene who is noisily eating his dinner while Eugene and Fanny try to talk. Welles liked his little in-jokes during his RKO years. Note as well the office sign in the hospital corridor that reads "Miss Haran - Head Nurse", clearly an in-joke reference to Welles' secretary Shifra Haran.