A&E's Ambersons remake

[Harvey Chartrand]

I watched a bad X Files episode instead, although I caught a few minutes of the Ambersons remake. William Hootkins does a great impersonation of Orson Welles circa 1976. Hootkins' farewell monologue at the (Dublin?) train station was masterful, although I agree that Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was terribly miscast. (Odd, because many critics thought Tim Holt was miscast in the original.) Overall, the A&E version was handsomely mounted and benefited from superb production values, but yeah, it seemed bland.
However, even if Arau's take on Ambersons had been a worthy follow-up to Welles' original, nothing will erase the tragedy of what happened 60 years ago -- how the drawing-and-quartering of Ambersons blighted what should have been one of the greatest showbiz careers in history. Nor does it eliminate the anguish all Welles fans feel over the irretrievable lost footage. (An aside: I was in Rio de Janeiro in '84 and I met a few old-timers who actually recalled seeing Welles in party animal mode 42 years earlier. One could say that Welles 'paid the piper' for the rest of his life.)

[akio]

Of course the new Ambersons would suck when compared to the original. But even on its own, the new version was still pretty weak. It's one thing to tell a story in a series of flashbacks, but the story line was all over the map. I think this is partly due to the fact that, for television, a movie has to be cut so that commercial breaks come at specific high points in the narrative (every 8-10 minutes). Acting wise, Rhys-Meyers was pretty one-dimensional: an unredeemable ass. You can't sympathize with him, you can't see what Lucy sees in him, so you really can't care what happens to him. Holt's portrayal is more ambivalent: he's an obnoxious spoiled brat, just as all of us have been at one time or another, but his love for his mother isn't fetishistic and it sure ain't incestuous.

Eugene came off as pretty flat as well. Oddly enough, I thought Tilly was pretty good. She's no Moorehead, and I don't think she was even trying to be like her. I really enjoyed that thrashing she gave Georgie. Pretty cathartic. ???

[Harvey Chartrand]

This surprising discovery gives one hope that the lost Ambersons footage might still turn up.
_

From today's Internet Movie Data Base:

Color Footage Found of Charlie Chaplin

Color footage of silent-movie legend Charlie Chaplin in his film The Great Dictator has been discovered - 60 years after it was shot. The footage shows how the famed last reel, which was a heartfelt plea for peace, was an improvised solution to an extremely difficult set piece. Chaplin wanted his 1940 satire on Nazi Germany to end with two opposing armies coming together in a dance, and the newly- discovered film shows him struggling to get it right. The 25-minute color footage of Chaplin at work was found in a suitcase at his former Swiss home. It was shot by Chaplin's elder brother Sydney and reveals his obsessive perfectionism, keeping crowds of extras standing around while he repeatedly practices his Nazi salute. Chaplin historian Kevin Brownlow says, "This is an amazing find. It includes shots of scenes which never made it into the final film, as well as footage of Chaplin at work. The fact that something like this can be found after remaining hidden for 60 years is amazing. It provides a unique insight into one of the world's greatest films and the man who made it." Brownlow will include the footage in his documentary The Tramp And The Dictator, to premiere at the Berlin Film Festival later this year.

[Le Chiffre]

Watched about half of the new Ambersons last night. What I saw was even worse then what I expected, and my expectations were pretty low. The acting was amatuerish, the direction incompetent. Everything about it was an absolute insult to Welles, especially towards the end. If he hadn't been cremated he'd be rolling over in his grave.

[Jeff Wilson]

LA Times article about Wise's experience on Ambersons and focusing on the Carringer version of events:

http://www.latimes.com/enterta....1.story

[Le Chiffre]

Very good article Jeff, thanks. I don't really blame Wise for what happened to Ambersons. The butchered studio release was the creation not only of Wise, but Jack Moss, Joseph Cotton, George Schaeffer and others, including - yes - Welles himself. It's just a shame that the scenes that do survive - many of them among the most powerful Welles ever created - cannot be seen in their original context.

Hopefully something good can come out of A&E's "boondoggle", as Jonathon Rosenbaum described it. Maybe there will be enough interest in the original AMBERSONS to do a GREED-style restoration. I think that's the only way we're ever going to have any idea of what Welles' original was like.

[Jeff Wilson]

The thought had occurred to me that maybe the miniseries would spur some action, but until Warner Bros changes its mind about catalog releases, we won't likely see anything. Another thing that might spark some interest is the next Sight and Sound poll; doesn't that take place this year? Considering that Ambersons made the '92 list, maybe another appearance would give an extra nudge. We won't see anything for the 60th anniversary, though.

And going back to Harvey's post about the lost Chaplin footage coming to light, we can always hope for the Ambersons print to surface. Stranger things have happened, like the print of Passion of Joan of Arc being found in a Swedish insane asylum, or was it Norway? Anyway, you get the idea.

[R Kadin]

The less said about the "New Ambersons" the better IMHO. Highly doubtful, without the weight of Welles's much-discussed original attempt pulling the project along, this newer and very minor train would have ever made it INTO the station, let alone out of it. Just one more comment, though: even if this legendary "lost" version of the original does turn up some day, with "Ambersons" we will still be left pining (as we do for so much of the master's work) for what might have been. The water in our Welles is ever bittersweet.

[Maury]

What about the peabrain reviewer in the New York Times this week who called Uncle Jack a "forgettable character"? Can't remember her name.

Shouldn't Bogdanovich have directed the remake? He showed in Daisy Miller he can do the stuff even in colour and with a variable cast.

[Le Chiffre]

Aggie,
I sort of agree that Bogdanovich is the one they should have hired to direct the remake. He knew Orson better then probably anyone else in Hollywood, and knew the original Ambersons as well as anyone. And with Bogdanovich at the helm they at least wouldn't have made a complete hash out of Welles' screenplay like Arau and Co. did.

DAISY MILLER does have something of an Ambersons quality to it, and the lonely sounding harmonica in Lavagnino's music score is reminiscent of Mr. Arkadin. But Cybill Shepard is pretty weak in the title role, so Bogdanovich is not infallable when it comes to casting and directing actors. After all, for his latest picture he hired Jennifer Tilly, who was laughable as Fanny in the new Ambersons, to play Louella Parsons. It'll be interesting to see if PB can do anything more with her then Arau did.

[Jeff Wilson]

In the case of Daisy Miller, though, PB had caught Pygmalion syndrome, thinking he was going to turn Sheperd into a star. He was also sleeping with her, and that obviously didn't help his judgment. Let me again strongly recommend the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, for an eye-opening ride through the New Hollywood of the late 60s early 70s, which includes the rise and fall of Bogdanovich.

[Le Chiffre]

Pygmalian, yes. Or you could compare it to Charles Foster Kane's attempt to turn Susan Alexander into a star. Even Orson was guilty of that syndrome with both Paola Mori and, later, Oja Kodar. As Jean-Luc Godard put it,

"The history of cinema is the history of boys photographing girls"

[jaime marzol]

would bogdanovich have been hungry enough to direct the new ambersons had he been offered it? that would be a grand case of stepping in the dead man's shoes. i think it would have been the end of bogdanovich, if indeed the end hasn't come yet. where is THE CAT'S MEOW? has anyone seen it?

will look for EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS. read the andrew yule book on bogdanovich a while back. quite a good read. it's available almost anywhere now for 75-cents.

i'm about halfway through WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART, also quite a good read. huston was a self destructive bastard. i know WHITE HUNTER is fictionalized, but i have several other books on huston, and in WHITE HUNTER it seems the fiction is thin and the non fiction is rippling.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

I'm just going by the information I have on this, but didn't Orson's movie of Magnificent Ambersons become a flop because the editors cut parts out of it while he was doing his movie "It's All True".

Actually, still according to the books, nearly all of his movies when he completed them, were taken, cut, considered flops, and after he passed away, put back together again, and considered #1 hits. With the acception of Citizen Kane, of course, which already was.

Probably because there was no cutting.

Has anyone seen The Big Brass Ring? I have. If you did, I even wonder, since movies were taken from him and cut up, maybe screen-plays were burned, rewritten and his name posted just for Orson Welles fans, like me to go crazy. That's actually the #1 reason I did watch it.

Why all these questions? Because you guys seem to have all the answers. Or better ones than what the books have to say.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

there's an article titled: quentin, is he Orson yet?

i wish these idiots would get in their head that Orson Welles is irreplacable.

replacing him would be like replacing the brady bunch or 3 stooges or the munsters. they were lucky to succeed with the addams family

but i mean, really, no actor, writer, director, producer, etc. etc. is going to replace George Orson Welles.

so forget it. :angry: