![]() Several other Welles enthusiasts have attempted to correct what Kelly calls "the challenge of undoing a cinematic injustice" through various means. Rose is not the first to attempt to reconstruct The Magnificent Ambersons. RKO burned its silver nitrate negatives to salvage the silver and make space to store other movies. And despite all the studio's re-editing and the unconvincing happy ending, The Magnificent Ambersons was still a massive flop. "Not only that, they took out the ending, which was rather bleak, and replaced it with a very Hollywood happy ending that doesn't seem to fit the mood of the film in total."Īll in all, Kelly says, only 13 scenes out of 73 were left untouched. They cut it down to 88 minutes," says Ray Kelly, who runs the Orson Welles fansite Wellesnet. "The studio took his 131-minute version of The Magnificent Ambersons. But costs kept mounting and RKO studio executives disliked the film's dark take on American aristocracy, especially in the jingoistic era before World War II. He was given a princely budget and built an entire mansion with moveable walls for filming. Welles, who had already adapted the novel for radio, wanted to tell a timeless story about Americans buffeted by unsettling new technology and economic decline through the fortunes of a small town's richest family. ![]() The movie is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. ![]() Welles started filming what was intended to be his second masterpiece in 1941, hot from the success of Citizen Kane.
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