Ambersons score + script = mindblowing - Also, extraneous scenes in long version?

[mteal]

Glenn,
I hope you get a chance to read Carringer's Ambersons book sometime, because it's filled with some amazing revelations about the film. His "Oedipus in Indianapolis" essay contains some wild speculations that are not very convincing, but his analysis of the memos between Welles and RKO over the film's fate are very detailed and insightful. And you're right: the story of the film's undoing is so convoluted it is hard to know exactly who wanted what in or out of the film. It shocked me to discover, for example, that Welles himself wanted the following things OUT of the film:

1. Eugene and Isabel dancing in silhouette after the ball and most of the scene that followed
2. The famous "Iris out" the closes the snowride scene
3. Lucy and George's downtown walk, where she coldly wishes him a "splendid trip" to Europe.
4. Jack's visit to Eugene and Lucy's new home.
5. Eugene and Lucy's walk in the garden.

You may be right about the attempt at "concert symmetry" on the Hermann CD. But I was able to slow down the First Porch Scene to it's proper speed - thanks to a defective tape deck -and I think it sounds even more beautiful and more ethereal that way.

[Lance Morrison]

what were Orson's reason for wanting those scenes out?? Was it just that they told him it needed edited down so he was choosing those scenes in order to possibly save his ending?

[Cole]

Yes, Lance. Welles only made those suggestions after he was informed that the studio wanted to make drastic cuts to his film to shorten its length, and after he was reprimanded by Schaefer for making a film that looked too “arty.” Carringer goes into great detail regarding Welles’ proposals to modify the film to satisfy the demands of the studio, but I’m not sure if that tells us much on how Welles actually wanted the film to be released.

[Narshty]

There are two other cues (three if you count the end credits arrangement) that exist in the film and sound decidedly like Herrmann, but are missing from the CD.

The first is the arrangement for the Major's fireside armchair scene, which sounds far more ominous and less mournful than either First or Second Reverie, as present on the disc.

The second is the funereal underscoring for George's repentence ("He got it three times filled...").

Are these actually Webb's compositions? If so, they're his best work in the film by far.

[Johnny Dale]

Ambersons Article nothing new, but I'd never seen the photo of Georgie & Isabel