The Lost Print: The Making of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons

The Magnificent Ambersons… every cinephile worth their weight either owns a copy, or makes a date for a midnight screening every time it comes to their local movie house.  What no one has, however, is a lost print of the film, regarded as genius by everyone who came in contact with it.

As many already know, The Magnificent Ambersons was Orson Welles’ follow up to his acclaimed masterpiece, Citizen Kane.  A legend surrounds Ambersons, one that details the cutting of an original print by overzealous Hollywood studio producers.  This “lost print” was Welles’ preferred cut of the film, and he himself said “it was a much better picture than Kane – if they’d just left it as it was.”

During the edit of Ambersons, Welles was deep in Brazil working on It’s All True, a film depicting four separate stories of Latin and South American Culture.  As a result, the film was left with editor Robert Wise, who was given full power by Welles to finish editing the film.  After a test screening in March 1942, RKO pressured Wise to cut the film according to the comments collected.  As a result, 43 minutes were removed from Welles’ version, and the film was released in August without any fanfare, and slipped into obscurity, causing irreparable damage to Welles’ career.  Welles himself asserted: “They destroyed Ambersons and it destroyed me.”

Many believe the reels containing Welles’ cut of Ambersons still exist, but are unsure where they could be found.  They could be deep in the vault at Paramount studios, buried in the stacks at the Welles library in Indiana, or among the stacks of reels housed at the Rio Cinemateca archives in Brazil.  Seventy-eight years after its initial release, two men will begin their search anew.

Filmmakers and friends Josh Grossberg and Dominic Ow first started chasing this lost print as students in Chicago in the mid-90s, and remain fascinated by it to this day.  The Search for the Lost Print will detail their travels around the globe to find those 40 minutes of screen time that have vexed cinephiles for decades.  They’ll encounter twists and turns, and make a few friends along the way.