Welles' first film still stands as one of the cornerstones of world cinema. His second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, still stands as the most infamous example of studio meddling in a great director's work. I and many other film buffs keep hoping and praying that a complete cut somehow emerges somewhere. For now we are stuck with a film with 50 minutes cut off and a jarring, "happy" ending tacked onto it.
Because the editing job defaced Ambersons so much, I had not really gotten much out of it on previous viewings, apart from the excellent acting performances and the moments of Welles' brilliance that still shined through. This time, something deeper clicked. Whereas I had seen the film as a family drama before, now I understood it as a social document. If Welles had made this film a mere three years later, after the war was over, the studio would not have butchered it and it would have been embraced by the public.
At the end of the war, dark film visions made sense to Americans who experienced the death and destruction of a war that was far scarier than depicted in John Wayne movies. Films like The Lost Weekend and The Best Years of Our Lives won Oscars in 1945 and 1946 not despite but because of their dwelling on the dark side of American life. Ambersons is a similarly dark vision, but not one for the rah-rah days of 1942. On a basic level, this film is asking what kind of country we are defending in the first place, not a question people were asking back then, but soon would be.
The film takes us to the turn of the century, but more than that, it imitates its rhythms. The rat-a-tat-tat of Kane's editing is gone, things have slowed down. The emotions and conflicts are more muted. Like Kane, the character of George is humbled but here he "gets his commupence" in ways that are truly sad to watch. Much of the drama of the film comes from these characters in a bygone, duty-bound world being anguished over not being able to have what their hearts cry out for. To add insult to injury, many of them also end up in penury, stripped of their old comforts.
Welles like Werner Herzog may be a master of a twentieth century art form, film, but his sensibilities lie in the literate, non-specialized world of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, the rise of the automobile is not presented here in a positive light. At the same time, Welles is also critical of the Victorian elite that resisted the massification of American society mostly out of their own self interest. His heart lies in a different time, but he is not a reactionary.
I also have the say that the roughness of the edits made me emotional when I watched Ambersons this time because I felt like something great had been stolen from me. The early parts of the film work so well, then suddenly the main characters are in dire straits with no explanation, and by the time the viewer can recover from the whiplash, a poorly shot improbably happy ending seems to invalidate all the emotions the viewer has put into the film. It was especially painful after the fadeout to hear Welles' conclusion praising the book's author and the cast and proudly taking credit for something that I knew was not what he had intended.
I found myself on the verge of tears at this humiliation, which puzzled me somewhat. Why was I getting so emotional? It hit me that I was probably reacting to current events. Musk's DOGE initiative is yet another example of wealthy powerful people destroying beautiful things in the name of money because they are incapable of creating good things, or are even interested in doing so. Welles will still make many more movies, but the path would be rocky forevermore.
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