The trou­bled genius of Orson Welles’ The Mag­nif­i­cent Ambersons

A sense of archae­ol­o­gy per­sists when explor­ing the films of Orson Welles. For a large part of his career, con­trol of his projects was pre­car­i­ous at best, result­ing in mul­ti­ple ver­sions of some films and ques­tion­able sur­viv­ing ver­sions of oth­ers. Welles’ sec­ond (and last) pic­ture for RKO, The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons, is over­shad­owed by the most com­plex of these histories.

Adapt­ing the Pulitzer-win­ning nov­el by Booth Tark­ing­ton, Welles was once again giv­en the chance to explore mem­o­ry and nos­tal­gia as in his pre­vi­ous film, Cit­i­zen Kane. The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons suf­fered severe cuts while Welles was work­ing in South Amer­i­ca – it is arguably the film he lost most con­trol of. Yet con­sid­er­ing its ques­tion­ing of per­cep­tion, the past and mem­o­ry, the film’s uncer­tain pro­duc­tion seems some­what fitting.

The nos­tal­gic nar­ra­tive fol­lows the ups and downs of the Amber­sons, a rich Mid­west­ern Amer­i­can fam­i­ly. Isabel Amber­son (Dolores Costel­lo) is court­ing the inven­tive but fool­ish Eugene Mor­gan (Joseph Cot­ton) before she leaves him after an embar­rass­ing inci­dent for the rich but cold Wilbur Mini­fur (Don Dill­away). They live their lives in a hol­low way but have a child called George (Tim Holt).

Through the years, Eugene becomes a suc­cess­ful motor­car entre­pre­neur but still yearns for Isabel, who is trapped in the love­less mar­riage. The grown-up George, in spite of hav­ing fall­en heav­i­ly for Eugene’s daugh­ter, Lucy (Anne Bax­ter), forcibly and obsti­nate­ly keeps his moth­er and Eugene apart until tragedy strikes the fam­i­lies. All are forced to face the hor­rors of the com­ing Motor Age and the changes it equal­ly enforces upon their town.

This is pos­si­bly the most frus­trat­ing instance of Welles los­ing con­trol of a project. Though the ver­sion of the film that exists today is still detailed and bril­liant, there’s lit­tle doubt that the lat­ter half and the infa­mous reshot final scene ren­der it uneven. Yet there’s much to pon­der in the loss of almost 40 min­utes of footage, and how this plays out in the film’s over­all exam­i­na­tion of nos­tal­gia giv­ing way to a harsh reality.

In both ver­sions, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between Eugene and George is final­ly met when the lat­ter is severe­ly injured by a car, some years after Isobel’s death. In the new end­ing shot by the stu­dio and edit­ed by Robert Wise, a clos­er bond between Eugene and Isabel’s sis­ter-in-law, Fan­ny (Agnes Moore­head), who long har­boured feel­ings for her sister’s lost love, is suggested.

In Welles’ com­par­a­tive­ly stark orig­i­nal, Eugene was to vis­it Fan­ny in her new, run­down com­mu­nal home, the gulf between them set in stone; ren­der­ing the accord between the two men bit­ter-sweet and cement­ing fur­ther the loss of Iso­bel, whose love Eugene can now only feel via rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with her son. The tacked-on end­ing seems con­tra­dic­to­ry to the film’s descent from choco­late-box, sepia-tined visions of the past to the busy, unfor­giv­ing mod­ern world. For a film that opens ear­ly on with Welles’ famous voiceover sug­gest­ing, ​“In these days, they had time for every­thing,” the fran­tic cut-up of the ending’s res­o­lu­tion unbal­ances the dark­ness and is deeply ironic.

But mem­o­ry is key to the film, and per­haps this end­ing acts in its own way as a unique, more accu­rate pre­sen­ta­tion of mis­re­mem­ber­ing; more true to the fal­lac­i­es and hypocrisies of our own retellings and that of the char­ac­ters. This mis­re­mem­ber­ing could be Welles’ own as it feels most appar­ent in his voiceover. Such is the gloom that builds as the years go by, it would be in line with the char­ac­ter of the nar­ra­tion to turn away from this sad­ness, if only because the motorised future looks so unforgiving.

The sym­bol­ic motor­car is shown to aug­ment almost every­thing and every­one around it. Snowy vis­tas of sledg­ing and frosty kiss­es in car­riages are soon replaced by shots so dark the char­ac­ters appear in sil­hou­ette. The car is rather like the fur­nace at the end of Cit­i­zen Kane, burn­ing those final dreams of an inno­cent, com­pact­ed world, albeit in years rather than minutes.

Cit­i­zen Kane and The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons are sim­i­lar in the way they deal with mem­o­ry. Both look back and then slow­ly trav­el for­wards in search of where things went wrong – that moment where the man­sions became des­o­late and the towns dirty. Welles once sug­gest­ed of The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons that, ​“The basic inten­tion was to por­tray a gold­en world – almost one of mem­o­ry – and then show what it turns into.” Cit­i­zen Kane is sim­i­lar, again mov­ing from the inno­cence of a snowy past into the more bru­tal, mechan­i­cal world of pow­er and reach.

Unlike Charles Fos­ter Kane, how­ev­er, Eugene Mor­gan recoils in qui­et hor­ror at the impact his ideas have had on the world around him. He is denied his own Rose­bud right up until the point at which it is lost to him for­ev­er; only gained momen­tar­i­ly when he final­ly for­gives the per­son who has kept him away from it. In either end­ing of the film, this would have been so, though is more sac­cha­rine in the ver­sion that was ulti­mate­ly released.

This was not the only time Welles adapt­ed the nar­ra­tive. Three years before, he turned it into a radio play for The Camp­bell The­atre with Wal­ter Hus­ton play­ing the lead. Even in this ver­sion, the end­ing is still lighter than the cold dis­tance of Welles’ orig­i­nal film end­ing, arguably resem­bling the re-cut ver­sion more. It sug­gests that the com­pro­mise was not entire­ly alien to the nar­ra­tive. How­ev­er, the film’s many oth­er edits, includ­ing one infa­mous cut in the mid­dle of what was a detailed and accom­plished sin­gle track­ing shot, accu­mu­la­tive­ly weak­en it.

In spite of the adver­si­ty the film faced through­out its pro­duc­tion, Welles’ roam­ing cam­era still result­ed in one of the great clas­sics of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. It’s cer­tain­ly proof of the director’s tal­ent – even hav­ing been forced to relin­quish con­trol to a large extent, The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons is still a mas­ter­ful work, whether we remem­ber those sepia visions from days long since past accu­rate­ly or not.