By RAY KELLY
The search for the lost, longer print of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons formally gets underway next week when The Lost Print team arrives in Brazil.
The film crew departs on Wednesday, October 13, for what is expected to be a four-to-six week hunt and filming, according to filmmaker Joshua Grossberg.
Once in Rio de Janeiro, Grossberg and his team of researchers will comb through various archives, interview collectors and piece together the puzzle that may reveal the existence or ultimate fate of the missing print.
Grossberg will be accompanied by producer Gary Greenblatt and cameraman Matthew Reber. Joining them in Rio will be acclaimed Brazilian cinematographer Janice D’Avila, whose previous work include the Oscar-nominated The Edge of Democracy and Elena for director Petra Costa. The Lost Print team has engaged the services of a group of Brazilian researchers, who are presently following leads Grossberg has uncovered over the past two decades.
“The mood on our end is good as our team in Rio tell us production is ramping up down there and everyone is busy,” Grossberg told Wellesnet. “Cinephiles and film collector organizations are aware of our expedition and, hopefully, that fact and the publicity will shake the tree and help us find the print.”
He said his upcoming documentary will detail his long-running investigation, as well as chronicle how Welles lost control of the film — much of it the result of racism and regime change at RKO. Grossberg, who was recently granted access to RKO’s decades-old legal files, hopes to deconstruct the myth that Welles was a spendthrift.
The Lost Print: The Making of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons is slated to air on Turner Classic Movies in July.
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.
“They destroyed Ambersons,” Welles would say four decades later, “and the picture itself destroyed me; I didn’t get a job as a director for years afterwards.”
Grossberg has theorized the rough cut sent to Brazil could be in the hands of private collectors there.
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, an archivist. He reported seeing a Welles print in a film can at Cinedia, 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.
Grossberg has identified four private collectors who bought films from the Cinedia warehouses.
A journalist and award winning filmmaker, Grossberg has teamed with Greenblatt, an award winning digital content producer, app developer and hard core Welles enthusiast; and producer Joseph Schroeder, known for his work for PBS, National Geographic, A&E and Discovery.
Grossberg had hoped to travel to Brazil several months ago, but he was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation has since improved., he said.
“Mass vaccination has actually been going well in Brazil, suffice it to say better there than in the U.S.”
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