#165
Post
by hearthesilence » Thu Apr 30, 2015 3:28 pm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's likely something would've been cut from the "original" 131 minute cut of Ambersons, even if things had gone better? (A lot of things I suppose - Welles would be present, he'd still have final cut, the previews would take place in a more sympathetic setting, an enormous eleventh hour cut wouldn't have been made before the first preview, etc.)
Obviously, Welles was open to cutting the 131-minute cut from the start, and according to Carringer, everyone he talked to in Welles' camp who saw this long cut (which again wasn't even screened at any preview) and who believed it was a masterpiece all believed that it was not a final edit, specifically agreeing that it was too long, it wasn't tight enough from start to end and needed some trimming.
So with that in mind, what would have been likely edits? Going through Carringer's book, I get the feeling the Pasadena cut (the second preview cut) comes closest. Again, it is much longer than the cut previewed at Pomona and more faithful to the original 131-minute cut. Most of the changes made between the Pomona and Pasadena cuts really involved reinstating footage that made the Pasadena cut more like the 131-minute cut.
Compared to the 131-minute cut, the Pasadena cut (which ran for 117 minutes) removed the following four scenes:
1) The visit to the Morgan automobile factory
2) The first porch scene with Isabel, Fanny and George (with the "vision" of Lucy)
3) The bathroom scene with Jack and George
4) The second porch scene with the Major and Fanny
I actually don't think these were terrible moves. The first porch shores up George's resentment towards Eugene, which gives stronger motivation to his outburst in the next scene about cars being a nuisance. But it may have played poorly due to the potentially hokey device of George envisioning Lucy and fantasizing her renunciation of her father. I think this may have been the primary reason for cutting it given Wise's remarks, but the cut is also understandable because the scene would not have been a loss in terms of narrative or plot details. It doesn't introduce any new story elements into the film so much as build on pre-existing ones that were already expressed elsewhere.
The second porch scene fills in plot details, but I think these were mostly investment plans that would go bad - they may have seemed dry and redundant in impact. Their crumbling fortunes are detailed thoroughly throughout the film, so it's not surprisingly that Wise would want to ditch it at this early stage.
The remaining two scenes I would probably miss, and they are actually in the theatrical cut. They have also been trimmed for the theatrical cut - the factory visit still loses its last shot (or two?) when George and Lucy head off on a horse drawn carriage and the others in Eugene's latest car. In the bathroom scene with Jack, most of George's dialogue was also cut out.
One other major change: George's long walk home and subsequent comeuppance (kneeling by the bed) is moved near the end, so that it becomes more or less the climax of the Ambersons' disintegration. I think this bit of restructuring is actually great. In the 131-minute cut, it came right after Jack and George part ways for the final time at the train station. So in the Pasadena cut, after Jack says goodbye to George, we go to Fanny's breakdown by the boiler (much of which was reshot for the theatrical release), George visiting Benson's office, THEN the long walk home, then the comeuppance, then the "Indian legend" scene with Lucy and Eugene, then George's accident….I get the impression this wasn't a dubious decision forced on the film, this was definitely something Wise strongly believed made the film flow better, and I don't get the impression Welles disagreed with it either.
Beyond that, there were minor changes, probably to tighten up scenes. As described in Carringer's book, most of them come off as logical changes (eliminating redundancies, etc.) The only one that gives me pause is trimming the original final scene, but it's very possible that it was a little flabby in the 131-minute cut and needed a little tightening. It doesn't sound like any significant changes were really made to it.
Anyway, if the 131-minute cut is truly lost forever, I guess the next best thing for me would be finding the Pasadena cut, and reinstating the two scenes that made it in the theatrical cut in shorter form. What's still missing may not be a great loss (and possibly an improvement, given the reasons and context in which they were cut), and at the very least moving the comeuppance scene gives it one edge over the original cut,.