The search for Orson Welles' lost masterpiece

In 1942 Orson Welles was the biggest name in Hollywood. His masterpiece Citizen Kane came out in 1941, and he had an unheard-of deal with studio RKO giving him final cut creative control.

Citizen Kane however was not a great commercial success, and for his next project The Magnificent Ambersons, RKO clipped Welles' creative wings, eventually taking his cut and “mutilating it,” Josh Grossberg told Culture 101.

The studio took his cut and removed almost an hour of footage, including changing and re-shooting the ending.

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Welles' original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons is considered one of the great lost films, and it's long been thought a copy may still exist.

Grossberg documents his quest to find it in a new documentary, The Lost Print: The Making of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons.

Welles was in Brazil working on a government film project when the RKO got its hands on his cut, and audience screenings did not go well, Grossberg said.

“Welles was out of the loop at this point, and try as he might, cabling editing suggestions left and right, those. were ignored, and RKO cut the footage down and held another test screening.

“And subsequent to that, they released the film in an 88-minute form. They completely re-shot the ending and what was considered by those who saw the original version to be a masterpiece that even excelled the level of artistry in Citizen Kane, ended up being essentially mutilated.”

RKO ordered Welles’ print be destroyed but there are no first-hand accounts of that happening, he said.

“There's no tangible evidence, no accounts that someone saw the actual print being destroyed. There was documentation that RKO ordered the print destroyed, but there is no official confirmation that it actually was destroyed.

“So, this print’s essentially missing. It's gone into the ether. And my thought was, well, if we can find it in the world, in the words of the great, late director William Friedkin, it would be like finding the holy grail of cinema.”

The Lost Print: The Making of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons funded by Classic Turner Movies follows Grossberg’s travels around the globe searching to for the 43 minutes that the studio hacked from Welles’ original.

The journey ends in Brazil where Welles’ had been working at the time.

“I think this is a story that needs to be told. People need to understand what the original version of Ambersons entailed, because the studio did Orson Welles a great disservice in cutting it,” he said.

The documentary is more broadly about the preservation of cinematic cultural heritage, he said.

“So many of our films are being lost to time. So, I think it's important to emphasise how do we save our cultural heritage in cinema."

As to whether he finds the missing print, wait and see, he said.

“Will I find the print? Will they turn up any evidence or any footage or any stills? And we're going to answer that question in the documentary.

“I can't talk about that now, but you're definitely going to have some answers as to the fate of the print.”