http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vIs9qz1KPI&feature=related
OW
...with impressive silence and all heads turned, I opened a book and sat reading it studying the book and so on. Suddenly, silence was broken by me saying, "I made Citizen Kane in 1940..." and so. I've been brooding about that for 6 years now. That I just sat and deliver a monologue to the audience over lunches on Mr. Chow's about pictures I've made. (laughing). So those guys made me brood a bit. That's the worst of them. That's my real obsession. (laughing). The picture of somebody sitting by himself at a restaurant and suddenly reciting his screen-credit.
v.o.
In fact, it wasn't John Didian who wrote the article in Esquire. The real culprit was Robert Allan.
LM
After Citizen Kane you made The Magnificent Ambersons?
OW
Oh, yes, yes.
(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)
v.o.
Welles doesn't appear in his second film, but the voice from the start of the story-teller was him.
(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)
LM
Were you deliberately looking into something you wouldn't appear?
OW
Yes.
LM
Why is that?
OW
I wouldn't want to be a... I made a mistake, I shouldn't have done it. I was obsessed with the idea that I would not be a star. That I only incidentally played great roles. Now, there's no such a thing as incidentally playing great roles. For me I wouldn't get me offered or anything, and I was in position to promote myself as a star, and I should have. I should have gone back to New York and play Hamlet, and as long as it is going I didn't. I had decided that I want to be known as a director, that was it. And I loved Ambersons and want to make a movie of it.
(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)
v.o.
The Magnificent Ambersons may not have the technical dazzle of Kane, but it has its own style; more subtle, no less marvelous. Welles' intention had been to create and elegy of the disappearing America, the declining fall of the great family, their mansion's life, and their way of life. A world of security and tradition, destroyed by progress and the age of the machine.
(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)
OW
The real point of Ambersons', everything that is any good in it is that part of it which was really just a preparation for the decay of the Ambersons.
v.o.
But you'll never see that part of the film. These stills was all that remain of the 3 or 4 missing reels, the film was cut by the studio during Welles' absence. At least 45 minutes of his version has totally disappeared.
OW
It was thought by everybody in Hollywood, while I was in South America, that it was too downbeat, famous Hollywood's word at the time. So it was all taken out. But it was the purpose of the movie, to see how they all slid downhill.
(Robert Wise Interview)
Interviewer
Welles has expressed enormous bitterness of the cut...
RW
I'm sorry about that because I wasn't involved in the cut. But it was one of those circumstances that couldn't be helped. He was in South America making a film for the government to help our war in that good neighbor policy, he had to go to Brazil to do that. He was not up here when we previewed the film, that when we had all that finished. We had some changes he wanted to make but then we took the picture out for preview. The audience just wouldn't sit still for it. They laugh at it, at some of the performances, they walked out, it was disastrous preview that you would imagine. And the studio was naturally very upset. They have use a lot of money for this film. Jack Moss, who was his man here, he was the associate producer of this film and I was kind of caught in between Orson Welles in his inability of coming up here and doing anything about it but still have a voice in it and the studio, on the other hand, who wanted to get something done with this film and that would allow to release it. We did cut about 25 - 30 minutes of the original and we had to make 2 or 3 or 4 bridge-scenes to tie it together and a new ending shot. And finally after the 4th preview, after making all the changes we finally had a preview, the audience seem to set for it, at least they didn't walk out or give a bad laugh, that the way it went. All I can say is that all of us up here did all the best we could with the problem.
v.o.
One of their solution was actually to shot a happy ending for the film, set in a hospital corridor where Agnes Moorehead and Joseph Cotten seem all set to walk into the sunset.
(The Magnificent Ambersons' playing)
v.o.
Not Welles' style, and certainly not his intention.
OW
There's no scene in a hospital, nothing like that. They never happen in the story. And the great long scene, which was the key long scene at the end where Agy Moorehead in a third-rate lodging house near where there is an elevator passing they're playing a comic record to Black crows on a gramophone and there's people in the back playing cards. Jo Cotten has come to see how she is. That was the best scene on the picture, that what the picture's about.
(end of part5)
OW
...with impressive silence and all heads turned, I opened a book and sat reading it studying the book and so on. Suddenly, silence was broken by me saying, "I made Citizen Kane in 1940..." and so. I've been brooding about that for 6 years now. That I just sat and deliver a monologue to the audience over lunches on Mr. Chow's about pictures I've made. (laughing). So those guys made me brood a bit. That's the worst of them. That's my real obsession. (laughing). The picture of somebody sitting by himself at a restaurant and suddenly reciting his screen-credit.
v.o.
In fact, it wasn't John Didian who wrote the article in Esquire. The real culprit was Robert Allan.
LM
After Citizen Kane you made The Magnificent Ambersons?
OW
Oh, yes, yes.
(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)
v.o.
Welles doesn't appear in his second film, but the voice from the start of the story-teller was him.
(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)
LM
Were you deliberately looking into something you wouldn't appear?
OW
Yes.
LM
Why is that?
OW
I wouldn't want to be a... I made a mistake, I shouldn't have done it. I was obsessed with the idea that I would not be a star. That I only incidentally played great roles. Now, there's no such a thing as incidentally playing great roles. For me I wouldn't get me offered or anything, and I was in position to promote myself as a star, and I should have. I should have gone back to New York and play Hamlet, and as long as it is going I didn't. I had decided that I want to be known as a director, that was it. And I loved Ambersons and want to make a movie of it.
(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)
v.o.
The Magnificent Ambersons may not have the technical dazzle of Kane, but it has its own style; more subtle, no less marvelous. Welles' intention had been to create and elegy of the disappearing America, the declining fall of the great family, their mansion's life, and their way of life. A world of security and tradition, destroyed by progress and the age of the machine.
(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)
OW
The real point of Ambersons', everything that is any good in it is that part of it which was really just a preparation for the decay of the Ambersons.
v.o.
But you'll never see that part of the film. These stills was all that remain of the 3 or 4 missing reels, the film was cut by the studio during Welles' absence. At least 45 minutes of his version has totally disappeared.
OW
It was thought by everybody in Hollywood, while I was in South America, that it was too downbeat, famous Hollywood's word at the time. So it was all taken out. But it was the purpose of the movie, to see how they all slid downhill.
(Robert Wise Interview)
Interviewer
Welles has expressed enormous bitterness of the cut...
RW
I'm sorry about that because I wasn't involved in the cut. But it was one of those circumstances that couldn't be helped. He was in South America making a film for the government to help our war in that good neighbor policy, he had to go to Brazil to do that. He was not up here when we previewed the film, that when we had all that finished. We had some changes he wanted to make but then we took the picture out for preview. The audience just wouldn't sit still for it. They laugh at it, at some of the performances, they walked out, it was disastrous preview that you would imagine. And the studio was naturally very upset. They have use a lot of money for this film. Jack Moss, who was his man here, he was the associate producer of this film and I was kind of caught in between Orson Welles in his inability of coming up here and doing anything about it but still have a voice in it and the studio, on the other hand, who wanted to get something done with this film and that would allow to release it. We did cut about 25 - 30 minutes of the original and we had to make 2 or 3 or 4 bridge-scenes to tie it together and a new ending shot. And finally after the 4th preview, after making all the changes we finally had a preview, the audience seem to set for it, at least they didn't walk out or give a bad laugh, that the way it went. All I can say is that all of us up here did all the best we could with the problem.
v.o.
One of their solution was actually to shot a happy ending for the film, set in a hospital corridor where Agnes Moorehead and Joseph Cotten seem all set to walk into the sunset.
(The Magnificent Ambersons' playing)
v.o.
Not Welles' style, and certainly not his intention.
OW
There's no scene in a hospital, nothing like that. They never happen in the story. And the great long scene, which was the key long scene at the end where Agy Moorehead in a third-rate lodging house near where there is an elevator passing they're playing a comic record to Black crows on a gramophone and there's people in the back playing cards. Jo Cotten has come to see how she is. That was the best scene on the picture, that what the picture's about.
(end of part5)
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