A Document of Its Own Unmaking: Filmmaker Brian Rose on his reconstruction of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons
Rose tries to capture the intended spirit of Welles’ botched second film.
Update: Tonight’s screening has been delayed due to illness. A rescheduled date will be updated here.
As a director, Orson Welles is probably best known for his early-career masterpiece Citizen Kane, considered by many to be one of the best films ever made. For many filmmakers and film fans, however, another of Welles’ films is one of cinema’s great White Whales: The Magnificent Ambersons.
Released in 1942, Welles’ second movie was infamously re-edited and re-shot by RKO, its production studio, after test audiences had a mixed reaction to the original 135-minute rough cut. The changes were made without Welles’ input or consent, and the over 40 minutes of removed material was lost forever when the studio destroyed it to make room in their warehouse.
For decades, fans and experts have speculated about what the original film would have looked like, referring to the shooting script, storyboards, Booth Tarkington’s original novel and other production documents.
Now, Kansas City filmmaker Brian Rose has taken the reconstruction process a step further with his own project, which replaces the cut footage with 3D reconstructions of the set and camera placements, hand-drawn animation and voiceover.
Rose’s reconstruction of the film screens on Thursday, Feb. 27 at 6 p.m. at Truman State University. We talked to him about the haunting legacy of Welles’ film, his own attraction to the project, and his process for putting the whole thing together.
Abby Olcese, The Pitch: For people who don’t know, give us a quick rundown of the history behind The Magnificent Ambersons and its botched edit.
Brian Rose: When he was 26 years old, Orson Welles had just made Citizen Kane, which was a sensation film when it was released. His next film was going to be an adaptation of a Pulitzer-winning novel, The Magnificent Ambersons. It was highly anticipated, had a huge budget and an all-star cast.
Unfortunately, the studio decided the version Welles created was not satisfactory. They thought it would be a flop, because it was too downbeat. America had just entered WWII, and people wanted upbeat musicals and happy films. This film was not that. The studio took the movie away from Welles. They cut 45 minutes of material and shot a whole new ending without his input. The removed footage was eventually destroyed to clear out space in the vaults. It’s made a reconstruction impossible until now, using my method of animation to re-create the missing material.
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What does this movie mean to cinephiles and filmmakers?
Orson Welles is the apex and nadir of any filmmaker’s aspirations. Every filmmaker dreams of making a film as good as Citizen Kane on their first attempt. Everyone’s worst fear, which happened to Welles on his very next picture, is to make something that’s deeply personal and — according to some who saw the original picture — was regarded as even better than his first film, and then to have that taken away and ruined.
In a span of 18 months, Welles went from a director with incredible creative freedom to one who couldn’t find work because of that project. That story hits close to home for any filmmaker who will tell you how much they put into a film; yearning for the success Welles had on the first film, and fearing what happened to his second.
How long have you been into The Magnificent Ambersons? What was your first experience watching the film like?
I watched it on VHS in a seminar on Orson Welles as a grad student. This was a two-night affair. The first night we watched the studio version, the second night we watched a reconstruction from the 80s that used still photographs and storyboards to approximate the original intent. That stuck with me, how haunting and deeply sad the original film was, and feeling this sense of frustration of what had been lost.
It stuck in my mind that when the technology came along, it would be possible to do more. That first reconstruction did an incredible job conveying what the plot would have been, and what the missing dialogue contained. But you can only do so much with still photos, and that’s the standard approach for reconstruction for films where the footage is lost. They’ll use set photos to tell you what should have gone there. What you don’t get is the sense of performance, the dynamics of the shot, the lighting, things like that.
For my endeavor, which I started working on in 2019, it kind of escalated. At first I thought I’d just use newly discovered material to expand on what had been done, then I realized the technology was there to go further, to recreate the sets in 3D, and to move the camera to give you a sense of where it would have been placed.
The Magnificent Ambersons was a really well-documented production, despite what happened to it. The original shooting script was a blueprint for the original film, so it became possible to reconstruct every shot almost down to the frame, and that goes a long way to capturing the spirit and energy of the film.
Can you give us an example of what that process was able to capture?
The original ending of the film was an eight-minute sequence in which two characters who become estranged try to reconcile. It’s meant to play out as an awkward encounter where the two characters have nothing to talk about. That’s what this scene is. It’s eight minutes long, but there’s maybe two minutes of dialogue as one character tries to figure out what to say to the other and then realizes their friendship is finished.
You can’t capture that with still images. With this version, it becomes possible to see how that scene should have felt, and why Welles felt at the time that it was the best thing he’d ever shot. The studio decided it was too strange, so it was cut.
The goal was never to try and make something that was a seamless reconstruction, though I suppose that could be possible in the near future. I liken my attempt to the Japanese art of Kintsugi (the art form that reconstructs broken pottery with gold lacquer). Rather than concealing the image, you highlight it, so it becomes part of the object.
I used a print of the film that I own, which is a little damaged and has some missing frames. I liked the idea of using this item that has wear and tear to create this new thing, and it’s paired with this kind of haunting or ghostly animation. You’re seeing how it all plays out, but you’re also aware of what’s missing. It’s a document of itself, of its unmaking.
Beyond the upcoming screening at Truman State, how do you hope this project will be shared?
My approach is that it’s a derivative work, something that comments on the original. It’s developed into something that’s far enough along now that I harbor some hopes I can get rights or permissions to get an official release.
Even if that doesn’t work out there’s value for it as an academic work. I’m making plans to show it in that setting, a university setting with lectures and discussions, emphasizing it as an educational undertaking.
Why do preservation and reconstruction projects like this matter? Do you think those concerns are still relevant today?
I’ve thought about that a lot. I think right now, seeing the climate we live in, and the extent to which people from all different walks of life are questioning the validity of art, with so much at stake, there’s a real risk of losing sight of the fact that art and culture and cinema and music are what give life meaning. It’s not enough to live for the sake of making money and paying the bills and eating meals and going to sleep. There’s more than that.
Particularly, there’s subject of the loss of our cultural heritage, it’s a lesson we’ve continuously failed to learn. We take for granted that we’ve learned those lessons. We think we won’t be like those guys who threw all their kinetoscopes into the river or wiped TV shows to re-use video tapes to save money. But we’re absolutely making that mistake again.
That’s what happens when a program gets taken off a streaming platform because it’s cheaper than giving royalties to actors. Paramount just took off their servers 20 years of coverage from MTV news. Years of pop culture and entertainment journalism are just gone now. It’s a mistake we’re continuing to make. If nothing else, this film and this project is a sign to people to be aware of how fragile things are, but also what they can do to help the films they care about.
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