Ambersons Again - Missing Footage

[blunted by community]

in the ball scene when gerogie complains about the guys his mother invited to the party, and says he doesn't care about clubs and such, makes makes him a hypocrite because the scene before he took over the club from fred kinney.

taking out the uncle john scene you don't know if wilbur is a good guy or bad. in his bedroom doorway scene he is ambiguous.

with the 2 ball scenes concerning george are taken out, when we see george before the bed room door with wilbur, wilbur is ambiguous, and george is a bit snotty.

put those scenes in and wilbur is a good guy and reacting to his creep of a son. right before the bedroom doorway scene a scene with george is taken out where he says he's leaving the following day, it's like his questioning is not proper (that is how i felt anyway.

without these scene, during the sleigh ride the moment when george gets snow on his face is just a comical moment. with these scenes intact it becomes much deeper. george is a creep and you feel some revenge seeing him smoked out and splashed with snow. it's foreshadowing for what is going to happen to him: the automobile is going to shit all over him, and it does. and to drive that point home the sooty statue begins the iris. that iris is the downfall

so after bedroom doorway scene we know georgie left town.

wilbur dies.

funeral

cemetery was cut out. it shows wilbur's monument all kept well, trim grass, flowers.

matchcut six months later.

wilbur's grave grown over and neglected.

george's diploma on the wall.

kitchen scene

cut out kitchen scene where cheap small houses are being built in the back yard.

in porch scenes cut out, cheap houses are being built in front tard. traffic encroaching. realestate plumets because the auto can carry people to the suburbs. mayor and fanny have lost money.

fanny bitter towards isabel.

look how much these scenes open up what is there now

[blunted by community]

welles never cuts to closeup of fanny to show you her hating isabel. you have to listen to her and you have to do the closeup yourself. like in the kitchen scene, and the automobile factory. what great acting. moorehead provides the drama, you provide the closeups.

also with the porch scenes, and the ball scenes where fanny is more vocal, the viewer is more likely to pick up on doing his own closeups because we know fanny is going to say catty things.

[Citizen K]

I agree with Blunted. There seem to have been such nuances in these characters that are missing in the present version.

And Moorehead's performance is terrific. That's one of the reasons why particularly the sappy new ending is so frustrating, compared to the original one. It is so fake and so out of context and character one can almost see Moorehead's and Cotten's souls leaving their bodies in that reshot scene. And I'm always puzzled by the fact that the audiences who saw the preview versions of the film were reportedly reacting negatively towards Moorehead's performance and Fanny's character. Moorehead's acting was so good that I find it difficult to believe she would have overacted the water boiler scene (or that Welles would have allowed her to overact) so badly that Moss had to reshoot it.

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that as late as in the 70's Welles was suggesting shooting again at least some of the deleted scenes as Cotten, Moorehead and Holt were still alive. Can anyone verify this?

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Moorehead's is a good performance, in the theatrical tradition. She suited Welles, in that way.

[jbrooks]

I know that there is discussion in Higham's biography of Welles planning to shoot new footage for Ambersons in the late 1960's or early 1970's. I seem to recall reading an interview with Welles discussing it too -- and mentioning that he was so sad that Moorehead had died and that he hadn't realized she was so sick. Is that in "This Is Orson Welles"? I don't have my copy handy at the moment.

[Johnny Dale]

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[blunted by community]

oh my god, dale had been kidnapped. all they left was these dots!

[allegra]

Re: Citizen K's comment "And I'm always puzzled by the fact that the audiences who saw the preview versions of the film were reportedly reacting negatively towards Moorehead's performance and Fanny's character," it blew my mind to see a similar reaction to the scene some sixty years later -- and not in Pomona, but in New York.

At one of the Film Forum screenings, Fanny in general, and especially the boiler scene, evoked nervous titters and even audible laughter. I had the distinct impression that some were seeing the film for the first time, and were puzzled by what they saw as histrionics, an approach to acting that was obviously foreign to them. And yet they were (ostensibly) there because they were Welles admirers, or students of his work. I got a quiet case of chills...

[jbrooks]

I missed the Film Forum screening of "Ambersons" but in defense of New Yorkers, I just want to note for the record that I did see "Ambersons" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music a few years back with a packed house and nobody laughed.

[allegra]

No offense to New Yorkers intended, jbrooks. I adore the city and its denizens, and don't think their reaction was at all a reflection on their location. In fact, it was the inarguable sophistication of New York audiences in general, and the passage of so many decades of filmic and human history, that made their reaction so wrenching.

I'm sure the Brooklyn audience was more typical of contemporary ones; perhaps it was just a quirk that the one of which I was a part had so many unprepared and unsophisticated viewers. Still, sitting there, I felt as though the decades had fallen away, and I had been sent via time warp to Pomona 1942. It made the tragedy of AMBERSONS hit home, slicing through me like a scalpel: something all the descriptions I had read, however well researched and powerfully conveyed, were somehow never quite able to do with such immediacy...

[jbrooks]

Allegra,

I have wondered myself why people would laugh at that scene. For me, its heartbreaking. I suppose the if one were emotionally detached from the film that Moorehead's hysterics might seem amusing, but how anyone could fail to be emotionally evolved by that point is beyond me.

I should note that I although I didn't the entirety of that awful remake, I did see the kitchen scene. Jennfer Tilly as Aunt Fanny was so over-the-top bad that I laughed and laughed hard. In fact, I'm laughing now just thinking about it.

[jbrooks]

Oh, the word above should be "involved" not "evolved." Sorry. Freudian slip.

[Glenn Anders]

Jbrooks: It was curious that Jennifer played Fanny in the remake of . . . AMBERSONS, and Louella Parsons in Bogdanovich's CAT'S MEOW, both about the same time.

BTW, I tried to Email you answers to questions you asked on a thread a few days ago, but the system would not take the script, even when I broke it down in parts.

Any suggestions?

Glenn

[Citizen K]

With a video reconstruction of The Magnificent Ambersons in mind, does anyone know good sources for stills, preliminary drawings and storyboards for the deleted and/or reshot scenes that are not in either Carringer's book or the excellent www.ambersons.com web site?

FYI, I found a web site with a short history of the film plus two vintage colour (hand-painted?) photographs, of Joseph Cotten and Anne Baxter. I haven't seen these before:

http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root....ons.htm

Thanks,

Citizen K.

[blunted by community]

the voyager disc has a bunch of story boards. THIS IS OW has some pictures you can't do without. and if you want to purchase any from the lily, you can get them on disc, and i have a menu of what they have.

if you give me a while i have been meaning to collect all my ambersons picutes and text on one disc. right now they are spread over 32 discs.