By RAY KELLY
The Lost Print team returned today from Brazil, but plans to head back to South America in early 2022 to resume their quest for the lost, longer cut of The Magnificent Ambersons.
Director Joshua Grossberg told Wellesnet he has obtained the needed permission to visit a major archive in late January or early February and inspect canisters of uncatalogued vintage film.
He is filming his hunt for Orson Welles’ cut of Ambersons for a Turner Classic Movies documentary that will delve into Welles’ fall from grace.
During the past six weeks, Grossberg and his film crew and researchers have visited the former RKO Pictures office in Rio de Janeiro, met with a film collector in Manaus and tracked down various leads.
If a copy of the 131-minute rough cut of The Magnificent Ambersons somehow still exists, the print would likely be in Brazil.
With editing underway on Ambersons, RKO ordered Welles to Brazil in February 1942 to direct the ill-fated It’s All True. According to RKO memos and cables, two groupings of Ambersons footage (14 reels and another 10), as well as 10 reels of Journey Into Fear, were shipped to Brazil so Welles could finish editing the film. However, after a test audience reacted badly at a preview, RKO ordered a happier ending to be shot in Welles’ absence and cut the movie down to 88 minutes.
The excised footage and outtakes stored in RKO’s vault in Southern California were subsequently destroyed.
More than two years after Welles left Brazil, RKO instructed Cinedia Studios in Rio de Janiero, which Welles used as a base in 1942, to junk the reels of The Magnificent Ambersons and Journey Into Fear left behind. Cinedia owner Adhemar Gonzaga, a cineaste and film collector, notified RKO he had followed their orders.
During a trip to Brazil a quarter of a century ago, Grossberg met Michel do Esprito Santo, who had worked at the Cinedia archives in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He reported seeing a Welles print in a film can, though he could not confirm it was The Magnificent Ambersons.
The archivist searched for it later, but it was gone — possibly trashed or sold to a private collector.
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