![]() There are still faint hopes that a copy of the original was sent to Welles in Brazil, but if so, its whereabouts are unknown. He has recreated about 30,000 frames, and explains: “That’s why it’s taken about four years.” Look at the films being made in 1941 – darker pictures like The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane – and films made in 1942, where everybody wanted musicals and escapist entertainment because of the really bleak outlook for the United States and the world.” That led to a total shift in what audiences wanted. He added that audience tastes had also changed: “In the course of making this film, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States entered the second world war. They said the movie stinks, but every now and again you get somebody who says: ‘This is the greatest movie I’ve ever seen.’” Rose said: “I’ve read the responses in the archives. In his absence, RKO panicked over the response to a test screening – even though the audience was dominated by teenagers, who were never likely to respond to a dark artistic film about American history. Just as Welles was planning to finish Ambersons, he was sent on a goodwill mission to Brazil to film the carnival in Rio. ![]() It outraged the real-life media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who tried to discredit Welles and destroy the 1941 film, ensuring that it was not mentioned in his publications. Although Citizen Kane – the story of the rise and fall of a fictional newspaper proprietor – is considered one of cinema’s most influential films, it was a box-office disappointment. Rose noted that RKO faced circumstances beyond its control. He spoke of his anger that RKO deliberately destroyed such footage, reducing the film from 132 to 88 minutes, and refusing to keep a copy, even against the advice of figures such as David O Selznick, the Gone with the Wind producer: “There were people who recognised the value of the film.” The rest conveyed their awkward, pained silence.”įilmmaker Brian Rose will use animated charcoal sketches to fill in lost scenes from The Magnificent Ambersons. It was eight minutes long, with only about two minutes’ worth of dialogue. The scene involved two characters who have not seen each other in a number of years and are reconnecting. ![]() He added: “The original ending is just brilliant, but the studio reshot it. Yet all but about the last 50 seconds of the shot was cut.” The camera moves from one end of a ballroom and then back up the other end you have about a dozen different characters walk in and out of frame, and crisscrossing subplots. “There was also a four-minute-long, unbroken moving camera shot whose loss is a tragedy. In one scene, he behaves coldly to his widowed mother after learning she has fallen in love again. He said: “Many scenes were cut because the character of George, the spoiled heir to the Amberson fortune, was deemed too unlikable. These changes were all made without Welles’s approval.”Īmong scenes that he has now restored is a subplot involving a boorish uncle. Rose told the Observer that, of 73 scenes in the original film, 21 were either cut completely or reshot, and 39 were shortened: “Only 13 were left intact. He built the entire physical set, working out camera angles from surviving “road map” evidence, including various screenplay versions and storyboards. Now a US film-maker has almost completed an ambitious project to recreate Welles’s original vision for the film, which starred Joseph Cotten, who also appeared in Citizen Kane and with whom Welles went on to make The Third Man in 1949.īrian Rose has used the latest technology to reconstruct lost material and animate charcoal sketches that prompt the viewer’s imagination into visualising what Welles once saw: “The few who saw his original version believed it was the greatest film they had ever seen.” But RKO cut about 45 minutes, deleting some of the more “downbeat” scenes and giving it a happy ending. Although the film is still considered a masterpiece and is admired for its visual creativity, expressionistic lighting and complex camera angles, Welles had intended a dark story about the demise of a wealthy family in the early 20th century.
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