Thursday » January 10 » 2002
Like Orson Welles original, controversy dogs Magnificent Ambersons TV remake
JOHN MCKAY
Canadian Press
Wednesday, January 09, 2002
TORONTO (CP) - It's the stuff of Hollywood legend. In 1942, film boy genius Orson Welles tried to bounce back from the controversy surrounding his unrecognized debut masterpiece Citizen Kane with a screen version of The Magnificent Ambersons.
Like Kane, Booth Tarkington's 1918 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel told of how the 20th century brought about the downfall of a self-made American aristocrat, in this case the head of a wealthy midwestern family called the Ambersons.
Although as stylish and innovative as Kane, Ambersons has languished in second place in Welles' belatedly honoured oeuvre, largely because the project was taken away from him by RKO, cut from 131 to 88 minutes, and had a different upbeat ending tacked on.
It was the seminal moment in Welles' own creative downfall.
Now A&E has embarked on a lavish, three-hour TV remake to air next week, and it, too, has become mired in controversy.
It began with Mexican director Alfonso Arau (Like Water for Chocolate, A Walk in the Clouds), accused by his leading lady Madeleine Stowe of botching it. Stowe was quoted by the Calgary Sun's Louis B. Hobson as saying Arau created a "disaster" with his determination to focus blatantly on the incest that is only hinted at in the original book and the Welles screenplay.
"It breaks my heart that we didn't do the material justice," she told Hobson.
The remarks have stunned veteran TV producer Norman Stephens, who says he had no idea Stowe was so disillusioned by the filmed-in-Ireland project.
"I don't think anybody can say that the film is a disaster," Stephens said in a telephone interview from New York. "I've been in the television movie business for 20 years. I can tell you what a disaster looks like. This is not in that category at all. I'm certainly sorry to hear that she felt that way. It was not evident to those of us who were there."
But if Stephens expected Stowe's co-star, Canadian actor Bruce Greenwood (Thirteen Days), to rally to the project's defence, he would be equally disappointed.
Reached by phone in Vancouver, Greenwood offered nothing but silence when asked about Stowe's criticism.
"Next question," is all he would say when pressed.
Asked for his own opinion of the film's outcome, his only reply was a terse: "Haven't seen it."
Persistent attempts to get him to open up were greeted with more lengthy bouts of dead air on the line.
But was it an intimidating experience, trying to remake what is now regarded as a Welles classic, albeit a flawed one?
"Yes, of course," Greenwood said guardedly. "You try and remake Welles, you better hope you're going to do something as innovative as he was when he did it. Because if you don't, there's not much point."
In the story, spoiled heir Georgie Amberson Minafer is furious over the growing romance between his widowed and ailing mother Isabel and Eugene Morgan, her one-time childhood sweetheart and now a nouveau-riche automobile pioneer.
He scuttles their rekindled love in an Oedipal-fuelled fit that is, admittedly, more obvious in Arau's reworked vision. Greenwood concedes, though, that the complex four-way relationship (Georgie is also fond of Morgan's pretty daughter Lucy) was beautifully depicted by Tarkington himself, an author he says he was raised on.
"On some levels, it's almost a shame to have ever made a movie out of it. Because the book is so good."
Greenwood had never seen the Welles screen version, but took a look prior to assuming the Eugene Morgan role first played by Joseph Cotten.
"I looked at it much more for Welles' visual style," he said. "But it's also difficult to ignore Cotten because he was so great."
Then, the actor says, he tried to put Cotten out of his mind because he realized he would have to do something else with the Eugene character.
Although much of the new version painstakingly mirrors the source material, neither Greenwood nor Stephens can point to which of the fresh scenes - the TV movie runs about 140 minutes - are replications of the 40 minutes or so of excised Welles footage that is presumably lost forever.
Stephens insists it's a new vision of a classic, not just a remake, but admits friends in Hollywood told him he was out of his mind to attempt it.
"In private moments, we sort of hope that Orson Welles is smiling at us. He might be a little pissed off at us, but that's OK, too."
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Some quotes from those involved in the upcoming A&E TV remake of The Magnificent Ambersons, the Orson Welles classic based on the Booth Tarkington novel:
"We certainly haven't done a terrible job. . .you can't look at that movie and say that this is a creative television-movie disaster on any level." - producer Norman Stephens on criticisms by actress Madeleine Stowe that it was a botched production.
"It's a remake. You can't help but it be a remake. I mean it almost doesn't matter how original your vision is. If you're working with a script that's the same script, it's going to be a remake." - star, Canadian actor Bruce Greenwood.
"It's certainly a lamentation over the way progress inhales things of beauty and belches out ugliness in its wake, while at the same time goes towards something higher." - Greenwood on the fin-de-siecle backdrop of the Amberson family's downfall.
"I was just really happy to get a part that didn't require me wearing a Spandex dress or a little tiny bikini." - actress Jennifer Tilly, cast against type as fussy, homely spinster Aunt Fanny.
"I just updated the real problem with the Ambersons, which is totally an Oedipus and Electra complex. It's almost Freudian." - director Alfonso Arau on the story's love affair gone wrong.
"A gift from God. . .such a talented person." - Stephens on Bruce Greenwood.
"They destroyed Ambersons. . .and it destroyed me." - Orson Welles on disowning the film after RKO took control of the final version away from him.
© Copyright 2002 The Canadian Press
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A&E's Ambersons remake
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Harvey Chartrand
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THE YEARS HAVE NOT BEEN KIND TO THE POOR 'AMBERSONS'
By JIM BECKERMAN, STAFF WRITER
The Record (Bergen County, NJ), Jan 10, 2002 pF6
Orson Welles has been betrayed twice.
The first time was in 1942, when he completed "The Magnificent Ambersons," the follow-up to his classic "Citizen Kane." The movie had the potential to be another classic. That is, it did before RKO studios took advantage of Welles' absence to recut the film, remove key scenes, and change the ending.
For decades, film buffs have salivated over the missing footage. Now Mexican director Alfonso Arau ("Like Water for Chocolate") purports to show us "The Magnificent Ambersons" as Welles intended it. He's remade the film in color, and allegedly used Welles' original screenplay (no other screenwriter is credited). The new "Magnificent Ambersons" airs at 8 p.m. Sunday on A&E.
The problem is not merely that Arau is no Orson Welles - that's evident from the clumsy camerawork, and the unappetizing closeups that make actors such as Madeline Stowe, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Gretchen Mol look grotesque. Nothing here even comes close to the breathtaking visuals of Welles' film, with its camera gliding through the great rooms of the Amberson mansion, or tilting up to that enormous staircase where Tim Holt and Agnes Moorehead shout back and forth between floors.
A more basic problem is that Arau failed to capture the nuances found in Booth Tarkington's novel about early 1900s Indiana, on which "The Magnificent Ambersons" is based.
His version of turn-of-the-century Indianapolis bears no relation to the "midland town" that Tarkington in his 1918 book, and Welles in his film, so painstakingly detailed.
Costume designer John Bright's low-cut gowns would have caused Tarkington's women to be banished from decent society. Ditto the nude statues in the Amberson mansion. And the light pastel wall colors used in the mansion didn't come into vogue until decades later. At one point, uncle and nephew have a conversation in a pastel blue saloon that, if it existed in the early 1900s, no man would have been caught dead in.
The Amberson world is stifling, not airy: Tarkington called them the Ambersons because they inhabit an amber world, a world of dark mahogany and gaslight. Moreover, like flies in amber, they're trapped in it. The story of "The Magnificent Ambersons" is how that world changes - and how the Ambersons are unable to change with it.
The prosperous, respectable Ambersons are old - that is, 19th century - money. The downfall of the haughty George Amberson Minafer (Meyers) - who deliberately sabotages his widowed mother's (Stowe) romance with an upstart automobile manufacturer (Bruce Greenwood), only to find automobiles and factories swallowing up the town he used to dominate - is the story of rural America giving way to the Industrial Age.
Tarkington, once considered a latter-day Mark Twain, was a witty, energetic writer. Welles brought the same verve to his filmmaking.
There's not one echo here of Welles' deft, stylish direction. In place of Welles' opening montage, which gave us a delightful summary of early 1900s fads and fashions while slyly filling us in on the back-story, Arau has introduced a lumbering flashback. The acting in the new film is abominable. You have to believe that the director, shoving the camera in everybody's face, encouraged good actors like Stowe to chew all that anachronistic scenery.
And about that screenplay: Not only is it not Welles' original, but if you manage to make it all the way to the end, you'll discover that Welles' original ending - supposedly the point of the whole exercise - has again been dropped.
So has Arau brought anything to this new "Ambersons"? You bet - the tango.
Would characters in provincial 1900s America be doing this steamy Latin dance that came into vogue 20 years later?
No - but it looks great against all that pastel scenery.
By JIM BECKERMAN, STAFF WRITER
The Record (Bergen County, NJ), Jan 10, 2002 pF6
Orson Welles has been betrayed twice.
The first time was in 1942, when he completed "The Magnificent Ambersons," the follow-up to his classic "Citizen Kane." The movie had the potential to be another classic. That is, it did before RKO studios took advantage of Welles' absence to recut the film, remove key scenes, and change the ending.
For decades, film buffs have salivated over the missing footage. Now Mexican director Alfonso Arau ("Like Water for Chocolate") purports to show us "The Magnificent Ambersons" as Welles intended it. He's remade the film in color, and allegedly used Welles' original screenplay (no other screenwriter is credited). The new "Magnificent Ambersons" airs at 8 p.m. Sunday on A&E.
The problem is not merely that Arau is no Orson Welles - that's evident from the clumsy camerawork, and the unappetizing closeups that make actors such as Madeline Stowe, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Gretchen Mol look grotesque. Nothing here even comes close to the breathtaking visuals of Welles' film, with its camera gliding through the great rooms of the Amberson mansion, or tilting up to that enormous staircase where Tim Holt and Agnes Moorehead shout back and forth between floors.
A more basic problem is that Arau failed to capture the nuances found in Booth Tarkington's novel about early 1900s Indiana, on which "The Magnificent Ambersons" is based.
His version of turn-of-the-century Indianapolis bears no relation to the "midland town" that Tarkington in his 1918 book, and Welles in his film, so painstakingly detailed.
Costume designer John Bright's low-cut gowns would have caused Tarkington's women to be banished from decent society. Ditto the nude statues in the Amberson mansion. And the light pastel wall colors used in the mansion didn't come into vogue until decades later. At one point, uncle and nephew have a conversation in a pastel blue saloon that, if it existed in the early 1900s, no man would have been caught dead in.
The Amberson world is stifling, not airy: Tarkington called them the Ambersons because they inhabit an amber world, a world of dark mahogany and gaslight. Moreover, like flies in amber, they're trapped in it. The story of "The Magnificent Ambersons" is how that world changes - and how the Ambersons are unable to change with it.
The prosperous, respectable Ambersons are old - that is, 19th century - money. The downfall of the haughty George Amberson Minafer (Meyers) - who deliberately sabotages his widowed mother's (Stowe) romance with an upstart automobile manufacturer (Bruce Greenwood), only to find automobiles and factories swallowing up the town he used to dominate - is the story of rural America giving way to the Industrial Age.
Tarkington, once considered a latter-day Mark Twain, was a witty, energetic writer. Welles brought the same verve to his filmmaking.
There's not one echo here of Welles' deft, stylish direction. In place of Welles' opening montage, which gave us a delightful summary of early 1900s fads and fashions while slyly filling us in on the back-story, Arau has introduced a lumbering flashback. The acting in the new film is abominable. You have to believe that the director, shoving the camera in everybody's face, encouraged good actors like Stowe to chew all that anachronistic scenery.
And about that screenplay: Not only is it not Welles' original, but if you manage to make it all the way to the end, you'll discover that Welles' original ending - supposedly the point of the whole exercise - has again been dropped.
So has Arau brought anything to this new "Ambersons"? You bet - the tango.
Would characters in provincial 1900s America be doing this steamy Latin dance that came into vogue 20 years later?
No - but it looks great against all that pastel scenery.
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jaime marzol
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Jeff Wilson
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No, but here is Robert Wise, from today's Internet Movie Database news update:
Director Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Sound of Music), who edited the original version of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, has added his voice to those of TV critics who have generally excoriated a TV remake of the movie due to air on A&E channel Sunday night. ("A fat chunk of lead," commented Matthew Gilbert in today's Boston Globe.) "It makes you appreciate our version that much more," Wise told today's (Friday) Los Angeles Times. Wise also denied claims made by Welles himself that the studio ordered scenes removed from the original version in order to "destroy" him. "I've always maintained that in its original version, Ambersons may have been a greater work of art, but we had to get the film so it would hold people's attention," Wise told the Times. "Remember, back then the average picture was 90 minutes; if you had something that went over an hour and a half you were in trouble."
Never mind that most of the Best Picture nominees that year were all in the 120 minute range.
Director Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Sound of Music), who edited the original version of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, has added his voice to those of TV critics who have generally excoriated a TV remake of the movie due to air on A&E channel Sunday night. ("A fat chunk of lead," commented Matthew Gilbert in today's Boston Globe.) "It makes you appreciate our version that much more," Wise told today's (Friday) Los Angeles Times. Wise also denied claims made by Welles himself that the studio ordered scenes removed from the original version in order to "destroy" him. "I've always maintained that in its original version, Ambersons may have been a greater work of art, but we had to get the film so it would hold people's attention," Wise told the Times. "Remember, back then the average picture was 90 minutes; if you had something that went over an hour and a half you were in trouble."
Never mind that most of the Best Picture nominees that year were all in the 120 minute range.
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Welles Fan
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jaime marzol
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jaime marzol
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Le Chiffre
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Jaime,
I think it was Emilio Fernandez you're thinking of. He was also in another good Peckinpah movie PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, this time playing a victim. Maybe there should be a special thread here on westerns. I like Leone's films too, and after all, Welles himself appeared in a couple of westerns. TEPEPA, mentioned recently here, is one of the best of Welles' 'acting only' films. Too bad it's only available here in the U.S. in a cheap pan-and-scan video of the shortened version, known as BLOOD AND GUNS.
This new Ambersons is starting to sound sickening. Our local paper here gave it 2 stars, calling it mediocre and mannered. You have to wonder why they bothered in the first place.
I think it was Emilio Fernandez you're thinking of. He was also in another good Peckinpah movie PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, this time playing a victim. Maybe there should be a special thread here on westerns. I like Leone's films too, and after all, Welles himself appeared in a couple of westerns. TEPEPA, mentioned recently here, is one of the best of Welles' 'acting only' films. Too bad it's only available here in the U.S. in a cheap pan-and-scan video of the shortened version, known as BLOOD AND GUNS.
This new Ambersons is starting to sound sickening. Our local paper here gave it 2 stars, calling it mediocre and mannered. You have to wonder why they bothered in the first place.
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jaime marzol
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mteal:
you just cleared up a mystery. was wondering what the hell this film BLOOD AND GUNS was. there was a 16mm print of it on ebay a while back for 80-bucks.
emilio fernandez, that's the man. just looked him up on WWW.IMDB.COM, he has quite a long list of credits, along with 40 credits as director. he was excellent in WILD BUNCH.
never saw PAT GARRET AND BILLY THE KID. liked peckinpah's BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, and also liked OSTERMAN WEEKEND, but i haven't seen them in years, not sure if i would like them today.
after reading lillian ross' PICTURE i gained a whole new understanding of how a great movie from a great director can get whittled down to nothing, as must have happened to some of sam's movies. so we have to learn to appreciate what we have.
i hated THE GETAWAY, thought it sucked, but my dad liked it a lot, and he has good taste in films, so it maybe it's not that bad, but it's not for me.
and we should have a thread for leone, westerns, and good western character actors. we'll put it right next to the bad ambersons thread.
strother martin in THE WILD BUNCH was excellent, martin and the other eunic that hung out with him. you get the impression they were having sex with livestock.
you just cleared up a mystery. was wondering what the hell this film BLOOD AND GUNS was. there was a 16mm print of it on ebay a while back for 80-bucks.
emilio fernandez, that's the man. just looked him up on WWW.IMDB.COM, he has quite a long list of credits, along with 40 credits as director. he was excellent in WILD BUNCH.
never saw PAT GARRET AND BILLY THE KID. liked peckinpah's BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, and also liked OSTERMAN WEEKEND, but i haven't seen them in years, not sure if i would like them today.
after reading lillian ross' PICTURE i gained a whole new understanding of how a great movie from a great director can get whittled down to nothing, as must have happened to some of sam's movies. so we have to learn to appreciate what we have.
i hated THE GETAWAY, thought it sucked, but my dad liked it a lot, and he has good taste in films, so it maybe it's not that bad, but it's not for me.
and we should have a thread for leone, westerns, and good western character actors. we'll put it right next to the bad ambersons thread.
strother martin in THE WILD BUNCH was excellent, martin and the other eunic that hung out with him. you get the impression they were having sex with livestock.
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Lee Gordon
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New Ambersons airs tomorrow. I wonder if another thread could be started for the other directors.
Articles on new Ambersons:
http://www.calendarlive.com/top....0.html?
http://www.calendarlive.com/top....0.html?
http://www.startribune.com/stories/459/1020530.html
Articles on new Ambersons:
http://www.calendarlive.com/top....0.html?
http://www.calendarlive.com/top....0.html?
http://www.startribune.com/stories/459/1020530.html
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Lee Gordon
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Jeff Wilson
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Well, having watched the new Ambersons on and off during the evening, it was alternately bad and tolerable. The low points for me were the performances of Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Jennifer Tilly. Both were terrible, Tilly in particular. Why Arau felt she would make a good choice for Fanny is a major question.
In the end, it's hardly worth commenting on; it simply proceeds in its dreary way, a three hour lump. It fails to move the viewer (this viewer at least) emotionally or otherwise evoke much interest of any kind.
In the end, it's hardly worth commenting on; it simply proceeds in its dreary way, a three hour lump. It fails to move the viewer (this viewer at least) emotionally or otherwise evoke much interest of any kind.
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jaime marzol
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Thank god my wife insisted in watching another Law and Order spin-off instead of Arau's Magnificent Like Chocolate brittle... I did catch a cruel 10-minute match-off between Tilly and the Georgie character, chewing the scenery like rabid dogs. Tilly, who can be funny and tolerable when playing her usual tart part, is nothing like Agnes Moorehead, nor is she anything of the proper age or carriage. The lines still ring like she's doing a 1899 version of Born Yesterday. The Georgie was too volatile, trying to emote with his green eyes splashed in closeup across the screen, then flapping loudly. the only thing that would have made it tolerable would have been the two accidentally choking on a pretzel 
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