Ambersons Again - Missing Footage

[Citizen K]

Thanks, Blunted. I haven't got This is Orson Welles yet, but I'll buy it.

It seems that enough Ambersons pictures have survived to justify a reconstruction like von Stroheim's Greed. It's a pity no company or such seems to be interested in doing it, apart from individual fans like us. I cannot imagine why Ambersons reconstruction would be harder to make or financially riskier than the Greed reconstruction. Greed and Ambersons are both most well-known, equally famous examples of films being butchered by the studio, so if Greed was given a much wanted reconstruction, why not Ambersons? WB are you listening?

But then again, an unreleased Welles film like Other Side of the Wind seems to have trouble getting a mere $4m to just so that it can be finally edited together. It's all so depressing.

[blunted by community]

even though hard core fans like us loved the GREED restoration, i don't think it made them any money. it's not available for purchase. now throw in beatrice as an extra spicer, and you know why no one has restored ambersons.

i will start gathering my ambersons stills. i also told some one here i would look for the welles fbi file. i forgot who asked for it, but it's mixed in with the ambersons pictures and i should have it soon.

[Le Chiffre]

Citizen K,
The guy that runs www.ambersons.com contributed a scene to last year's draft of the Ambersons project that Jaime Marzol and I have been doing off and on (mostly off) for a couple of years now. I haven't talked to him in a while, but last time I did he said he was going to make another large photo order from Lilly. However, I think we used most if not all of the surviving photos of the missing scenes in last year's draft. Between those and the original storyboards there is enough visual information to convey the dramatic essence of the missing scenes, several of which were in one shot anyway.

That takes care of the visual side. The soundtrack is another matter. Once one studies the missing scenes (as described in the cutting continuity) one sees that there were many points at which the three soundtrack elements (the dialogue, the music, and sound effects) worked in a harmonious, almost symphonic way which was characteristic of Welles' artistic style throughout his career. Some people have suggested that we took the wrong approach by using voiceovers instead of subtitles to convey the dialogue, but we felt that it was important to recreate the essence of the soundtrack as well as the visuals, and voiceovers were the only way to do this. For the last draft I did all the voices myself, which was something of a joke when it came to the female characters like Fanny and Isabel. But that was simply to illustrate the duet-like relationship between Hermann's music and the dialogue (like an opera that's spoken instead of sung). I've just started work on the next draft of the project, having finally lined up a female voice to do the female characters. The results so far have been amazing, but there's a long way to go.

I heard someone mention on one of the old Welles boards that he had heard that the soundtrack for the original full-length version of Ambersons still existed somewhere in a private collection. If true, a stills and soundtrack restoration would be a no-brainer to do. I'm doubtful tho, that the soundtrack still does exist, as I'm even more doubtful that a 16mm print of the original exists somewhere in Brazil. However, there's another intriguing possibility: the original acetates that Welles had the actors pre-record all their dialogue on before shooting began. Do those still exist somewhere? I can't think of a reason why the studio would have destroyed them, although there's never been any evidence or even rumor that they still exist. However, the fact that one of Hermann's takes for the "second porch scene" does still exist gives one cause for hope.

The purpose of our Ambersons project (which I prefer to think of as an "essay" rather then a "restoration") is to create a draft that is good enough to show to a producer who might be willing to put serious money into the project to have it done using professional voiceover artists, as well as professional equipment and technicians (Turner Classic Movies would be an obvious first target). I applaud your desire to do an Ambersons reconstruction of your own, and would be very interested to see your approach when you get it done. I have to warn you though: even a cheap amatuerish hack job like ours has been monstrously time consuming.

[jaime marzol]

i stand up from my chair and applaud everything mteal said.

when i was looking for some one to do an ambersons restoration with, after i read what mteal posted, he was the obvious choice. he's the only person that was aware of the symphony of music, visuals, and dialogue welles intended.

mteal is being modest. a reconstruction does not need professional voice actors, it needs mteal. some of the stuff he did on our restoration could raise the hairs on the back of your neck. a restoration does not need many voice actors. it doesn't need women reading the women parts. audio books work with one reader, and ambersons restoration works with one reader. another thing i figured out is that the less pictures and story boards you have the better the story can be conveyed.

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks alot Jaime, I appreciate it. But you should hear this lady I've lined up- she's pretty good. We've only had one expiremental session so far, but a female voice makes a big difference, especially in Isabel's letter to George. And at the beginning of the session she hit me with an Anne Baxter imitation (from The 10 Commandments) that blew me away. I'll send you a CD when we get some usable takes.

[Citizen K]

Thanks, Mteal. I know it's going to be a project that will take a long time to finish. I've also been wondering about the dialogue. It's obvious that the dialogue can't be scrolling because there is so much of it and perhaps only camera instructions might be displayed on screen, in addition to the stills and drawings. I'm thinking about either doing a voice-over with my normal voice, describing what the dialogue implies or by reading out all the lines myself. I don't know whether I should try to impersonate the actors. The male ones might not be too difficult, but the female ones... But anyway, if I will read out the lines, it's obvious that one must try to change one's own voice at least to some extent. Otherwise Major Amberson's fireside scene, for instance, would be incomprehensible if you cannot tell who's speaking in the background.

For some of the reshot scenes, snippets of dialogue from the remakes could be used, since there were sometimes same bits of dialogue used. However, it might be confusing if some lines in Isabel's bedroom scenes , for instance, had Costello's voice, other lines had mine or someone else's. I haven't heard Welles's radio play (Campbell Playhouse version) of Ambersons. I wonder if it is similar to the film so that it could be used in some of the deleted scenes?

And yes, it would be great if the acetates existed. When the studio burnt Ambersons material, would they have gathered it all from the music and sound departments as well and destroyed it, or only destroy the film elements?

Good luck with your project!

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks, same to you. There's certainly no best way to do it, but as Jaime said, we've found that a sort-of "audio-book crossed with an old-time radio program" approach is the most effective way of recreating the soundtrack.

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Citizen K: You will find that the Campbell Playhouse version is closer to the book and the butchered . . . AMBERSONS than Welles' cut. Though he must have started with the book and the radio play, Welles invented the final sequence, for instance, later. My guess is that producers at RKO forced the Mercury Theater to return to the simplicity of the radio production in Welles absence. Walter Huston and his wife appeared with Welles in the Campbell Playhouse on this one.

[Jack184]

mteal and Jaime Marzol:

Have you tried to contact Robert Wise for some advise on your Ambersons project? He (or his attorneys, agents, managers, whaterver) may or may not take you seriously, and his health may not permit it, but it does not hurt to ask. If he can come up with some notes or something, it might help.

He can probably be contacted through the Director's Guild. I know he was a participant in the destruction of Ambersons but a young studio editor in those days would not be in any position to argue with management. He is, of course, one of the few people left who has seen the preview cuts and is probably the easiest to find. He may also know who his assistant editors were and if they are still around. If she is still alive, I suppose Amalia Kent also saw the preview version.

You might not get anything useful. Stanley Cortez had some tantilizing descriptions of what was cut, like the Ambersons ball and the disputed long hand held shot of the empty mansion interior but he had a way of always saying the same thing. He even carried a folder of notes that he read from. It may have been senility or he was just not much of a public speaker or he got tired of answering the same questions.

[colwood]

Interesting idea. But from reading the past threads here on Ambersons, I get the feeling that Wise is not on good terms with most Welles fans. Wise himself, i believe, has also steered away from the Ambersons controversy. And finally, I believe Wise died last year.

[Citizen K]

Thanks, Glenn, for the info on the radio play version.

Robert Wise is definitely the person who should know more about the film than anyone else alive and he is still very much alive, according to IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0936404/

But I feel Wise has been very defensive about his involvement with the project:

http://www.imdb.com/SB?20020111#11

He is an old man and his memory might not be as good as it used to be. And in addition to all this, he is a director in his own right so he may not be interested in talking about someone else's film, particularly if it concerns once again discussing rather negatively perceived part of his career; he has his own legacy to think about.

On the other hand, Wise did help Carringer when he was writing The Magnificent Ambesons - A Reconstruction. So maybe he might help again, if approached and treated the right way.

If anyone ever gets to talk to Wise, in my opinion it would be particularly interesting to ask about all the different preview versions of the film: Pomona, Pasadena, Inglewood, Long Beach. What was cut out in each preview, what was left in. Another big question is did Welles order the cuts that were already done to the film when it first premiered at Pomona and which were apparently quite a departure from the continuity cut version of the film.

[colwood]

In that case I stand corrected. I swear I remember reading an article last year about him passing but I was obviously wrong.

[smartone]

Here is video of Wise himself talking about Ambersons
sounds like he is trying to spin his reedits and reshooting as a good thing

http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/Multimedia/Popup/0,,1482,00.html

[Citizen K]

Only a year ago there was an American Cinematheque tribute to Wise, and he was supposed to be present, schedule permitting, so he still seems to be going strong. Since I've nothing to do, I went through the cast of Ambersons on IMDB and the only people connected to the film, apart from Wise, who are known to be alive according to it are make-up artist Robert J. Schiffer and actors Bobby Cooper (Young George, his most recent credit is a character called George in I am Sam), Nancy Gates (Girl, uncredited). Utter trivia.

[Jack184]

I suspect that Robert Wise is defensive about his role in Ambersons because he knows he stood on the wrong side of its destruction. Like I said before, he probably had little choice, other than to be like Bernard Herrman and storm off. Had he said that the preview version should be released, RKO would have removed him from the picture and his entire career would have been placed in doubt and some hatchet man would have been brought in and perhaps made it even worse.

I even remember seeing an interview (unfortunately I forgot where I saw it, perhaps it was something related to Arau's Ambersons) where Wise said he was sorry for what happened. In those days, few studios, particularly smaller ones like RKO would release a film of great artistic merit and limited boxoffice appeal. How they expected to take a story like Ambersons and make it commercial for an audience in then rual Pomona shortly after Pearl Harbor is beyond me, but things were different then. They had to have something they could release.

Even Welles seemed to think something had to be done (although the document seem to show only minor revisions) and the Mercury Productions staff mostly went along with it. Welles said Cotten was duped by RKO and maybe he was but the topic alone would have been difficult to accept by people who were worried about a Japanese or German invasion.

If a film was made about Disneyland's Main Street deteriorating into downtown Detroit and it previewed Christmas 2001, no matter how great it was, it would probably end up drastically recut, delayed or not released at all.

Wise seemed to be willing enough to talk about Ambersons in recent interviews. He gets defensive about the film's recutting, but he may feel more comfortable if only asked how the preview looked. If it is too touchy for him, he does not have to answer. After he is gone, there will be nothing to rely upon except for the stills, storyboards (which do not include some key sequences) and written descriptions.