A&E's Ambersons remake

[jaime marzol]

everytime i read something like this:

"I think Welles knew he had a bad film. It's a horrendous film! It was horrendous before the edit"

it's like checking into a literature chat room and reading that shakespeare sucked, and hemingway was overated. why would that writer want to quote cromwell anyway? he's just a lousy actor. why not quote a guy at a filling station? the guy at the filling station might have as much in comon with ambersons as cromwell, if not more.

[LA]

"I think Welles knew he had a bad film. It's a horrendous film! It was horrendous before the edit!"

Bleugh. I thought they were using the Welles connection purely as a publicity angle, but I was hoping to be proved wrong.
I don't think I'll be going anywhere near the Arau Ambersons.

[Welles Fan]

Also, some people like Cromwell get their information and opinions from one source, and parrot them as though they are their own thoughts. I remember in college, a fellow Wellsian and myself were discussing Kane. I think I had just bought the Nostalgia Merchant VHS (this was around 1980) of Kane and we had just watched it. A guy starts up with "Orson Welles did not write Kane. He had little to do with making the film. The cameraman had a lot to do with the look of the film, which looks exactly like a move he photographed called Mad Love", and so on. All I could say was "so you've read Pauline Kael's attack on Welles in The Citizen Kane Book. Try reading another viewpoint before subscribing to hers! And learn to credit your sources!"

I think Cromwell must've read some such thing in his "research" for the Hearst role, and has placed the words "I think" in front of someone else's (probably Arau's) opinion.

[jaime marzol]

the whole thing with Arau is too sad. all this lousy Ambersons version does is stop a better version from being made. it's sort of like Housaman's version of Ceaser stopping Welles' version.

i can picture Arau directing. he gets that grin on his face that we know so well from The Wild Bunch, picks up his megaphone and yells, "ok, you godamned gringos, let's shoot this fucker."

then meg tilly gets pissed.

has anyone heard the commentary track for Bound? meg tilly walks in the recording room half way through the film, and comandeers the commentary. in that 50 minutes she was in the room she found about a dozen opportunities to mention her accadamy award nomination. she is a shallow, indifferent star, but she has great tits.

[Jeff Wilson]

I caught a very brief "Making of The Magnificent Ambersons" commercial on A&E last night, and Tilly commented that people would like it because the girls would think the guy playing George was cute, guys would love Gretchen Moll, and older people would like the love story. Whatever. They didn't show enough clips to make any kind of judgment on the show, however. Looks like it's showing on the 13th. Welles was not mentioned in the promo piece.

[ChristopherBanks]

Welles knew he had a bad film on his hands?

I think it's a case of pot calling the kettle black.

They know they've got a film that no-one will give a shit about on their hands and since the "mea culpa" to Welles angle hasn't generated enough publicity, they've tried another tactic; namely "the original sucked ours is better".

Remakes are a much-maligned field of movie-making, and by slagging off Welles and the original they're justifying this new version's existence. A safe bet too, in many ways - most of the general public haven't seen "Kane", and "Ambersons" is even more obscure.

The comment that got me was "old-fashioned"...a story filmed in 1942 from a book written close to the turn of the century-1900? What an oaf. I wouldn't be surprised if they've replaced the original dialogue with anachronistic James Cameron modernisms. I'm surprised he didn't add "And ours is in colour too" to his list of incisive comments.

[Le Chiffre]

Jaime,
Glad you mentioned Arau's cameo in THE WILD BUNCH, one of my all-time favorite movies ("Pleeeeese! Cut thee fuse!").

But to have him direct the new AMBERSONS when he didn't even like the original is rediculous, and shows how little respect the producers have for Welles. I'll watch the new AMBERSONS, but my hopes are not high.

[jaime marzol]

i loved Wild Bunch. the director's cut in lbx is great. i saw it first run in a drive-in when i was 12? back in the days when you could stretch out on the hood of the car without fear of it caving in. have loved it ever since. Wild Bunch, along with The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly are the greatest modern westerns, i think.

arau reprised that Wild Bunch smilling mexican roll in about a dozen films after Wild Bunch.

[Jeff Wilson]

I'm curious how Ireland is going to double for turn of the century Indianapolis; the brief scenes I saw just looked lusher and greener than what I had in my mind for that time. Certainly more pastoral than in Welles' version.

[Fredric]

Jaime:

You mentioned The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but not the one Leone made next: Once Upon a Time in the West, my favorite of them all. What gives?

[Jeff Wilson]

From the New York Post, 12/28/01:

A&E's three-hour remake of Orson Welles' classic "The Magnificent Ambersons" is off to an inauspicious start - even before it's hit the airwaves.

First, actress Madeleine Stowe, who's starring in the remake, called the shoot "12 weeks of agony," saying director Alfonso Arau "botched" the movie. "All he wanted to talk about was incest," Stowe told a Canadian newspaper.

Now it appears that Welles' daughter, Beatrice Welles, isn't too thrilled with the hoopla surrounding A&E's remake, since it's revived insinuations that the 1942 original - slashed by RKO Studios without Orson Welles' knowledge - ruined her father's career.

Last week, A&E was offering up Beatrice Welles to talk about how the original "Magnificent Ambersons" affected her father. Then, suddenly, the opportunity was rescinded - Welles had suddenly made herself "unavailable" to talk to the press.

"From what I understand, she's not unhappy with this particular movie but is upset about what's being said about the original movie, that it almost ruined her father's career," says one insider. That's kind of strange, considering that Beatrice Welles surely knows that's what's been said about "Ambersons" for almost 60 years now. A&E's "Ambersons" airs Jan. 13 (8-11 p.m.).

[jaime marzol]

i haven't see ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. is that with henry fonda? have heard it's great. i need to see it. i like leone a lot. people don't realize what a great effort went into making TGTBTU. There is a case of the director making artistic descissions to compensate for equipment limitations. you never see an actor say many words. usually by the 4th word he has to cut to a reverse, or the other actor reacting to what is being said. their sound wouldn't stay in synch for more that 7 seconds. it could have looked like a Hercules movie.

i also liked the 42 hr cut of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA.

[Fredric]

Sorry this is off topic:

OUATIA is excellent. I also like the one Leone did between OUATITW and OUATIA: Duck, You Sucker! (aka A Fistful of Dynamite), a Zapata Western about the Mexican Revolution with James Coburn and Rod Steiger as a much more convincable Mexican than Heston (bringing it back to ON topic).

We should restart the thread from the old site: Great Films I Have Seen Recently.

[Welles Fan]

I'm a big Leone fan as well. I agree with Jaime that The Good, etc is the best of the bunch, but OUATITW is a very close second. I also liked that Steiger/Coburn one as well. I didn't like Fistful, the first one, because it was such a cheezy remake of Yojimbo, and the dubbing was execreble, even bu Spaghetti western standards.

Speaking of OUATITW, has anyone ever heard who dubbed the scrumtious Claudia Cardinale in that? I've always thought it sounded like Anne Bancroft.

Another great aspect of those Leone westerns is the music provided by Ennio Morricone. Who'd have thought Jimi Hendrix style electric guitars with Spanish chanting would sound so good in westerns? I like the way the climactic gunfights of For a Few Dollars More, The Good, and OUATITW consist of 10 minutes of the combatants eyeing each other while alternating closeups with sweeping vistas while Morricone's guitars and choruses reach a crescendo. I particularly like the sequence in The Good where Eli Wallach runs through the cemetary looking for the grave with the money while an operatic soprano (of near Yma Sumac range) blesses the endeavor on the soundtrack.

Also, ever see any spaghetti westerns by directors other than Leone? You're not missing anything if you haven't-they all suck (and 99% seem to have Lee Van Cleef in them). They're a great example of what the creative guy can do (Leone) and how bad it can get when non-creative hacks try to steal somone else's formula for success.

I was a bit disappointed in the Leone gangster flick. Thought it was simply too sleazy.

[dmolson]

yes, I'll agree that Sergio Leone was great. He should have his own forum/topic, like badly dubbed/synched pictures... Seriously, back on topic – wouldn't it make more sense that Beatrice's reason behind withdrawing from the publicity mill of the remake TMA is because of the clang-headed comments by Cromwell and Arau, which essentially toss bad weeds on the Welles' film mantle? Few can deny that his career hit a bit of a wall after TMA, but these two clowns are actually slagging a great film, and something that, even in its truncated, chopped form, is beyond the grasp of most modern filmmakers today. I thiink Beatrice should come out, get on the publicity tour, and put a big flaming bag of fertilizer on Cromwell and Arau's doorstep...