After Citizen Kane, Orson Welles has become the biggest
thing in Hollywood ,
or at least, as the studio system was concerned. He was offered another chance
to make his own movie. The result was 'The Magnificent Ambersons', a flawed
masterpiece. It was flawed because it was not Welles ' original vision.
Ambersons was the classic example of studio interference, the studio bosses,
while finding certain scenes ambiguous, decided to cut or even worse, added
extra scenes which they believed would clarify the meanings. Of course, all
these were against Citizen Welles ' wish, and the existing shortened version is
never the complete version. Ironically, the plot in Ambersons mirrored that of
Welles ' experience, after this film , Welles have lost all the artistic
control he could devote to his later work, and his later life was consumed with
false promises and disappointments. Nevertheless, Ambersons was still
considered magnificent by its peers, and the film appeared twice on the Sight
and Sound Critics Top 10 list .
Cars are useless...
Too often, as time goes by, great things fade out. This was
what happened to the Amberson family, a wealthy dynasty based in Indianapolis at the dawn
of the 20th century. That was a time when there were no, you know,
cars. Isabel Amberson married Wilbur Minafer, a stone cold man who didn’t know
how to feel passion. Indeed, Isabel was more attracted to Eugene Morgan, yet
she did not express her love to him. The couple had a son, George, a brat who
was rather infamous in town.
George came back from college, and there was a celebration
for him. Eugene
was amongst the guests, and he was now an automobile businessman. He was
widowed and had a daughter called. While young George had an instant positive
impression on Lucy, he did not like Eugene .
Soon after, Wilbur died and Isabel became a widow. George even made the
sweeping statement that ‘automobiles are a useless nuisance, which had no
business being invented’. Eugene ,
at an older age, turned out to be more far-sighted – he knew that would be a
change, be it good or bad. George’s animosity escalated when his aunt, Fanny,
implied that his mother Isabel might just love Eugene all the time, instead of his father.
Knowing that Eugene was planning to restart a
possible relationship with Isabel, he closed the door on Eugene . On the other hand, he decided to take
his mother on a world tour, in an attempt to sever her ties with Eugene once and for all.
Yet by committing to this, that meant George was leaving his love – Lucy, and
all she could do was to fake a smile as they parted (E.L. This is the scene
subject to studio interference.)
Eventually, Isabel became ill and was on the edge of her
life. The overbearing George still insisted to not to allow Eugene
The auteur behind ‘Ambersons’ was Orson Welles, he was the
director, writer and narrator for the film. The narration was indeed essential
for the film, as it provided a dramatic tension between narration and image –
Welles was sort of the unreliable narrator here. The film worked by duplicity,
and some of the scenes were supposed to be ambiguous. However, the ‘old-school’
executives in the studio certainly did not have the will to appreciate or
comprehend these narrative possibilities, and thus they cut down as many as 60
minutes from the original version, and that only made the final version even
more confusing. Worse still, they decided to provide meanings to those
ambiguous scenes (e.g. the scene when George left Lucy), and that undermined
the imaginative contributions from the viewers. The studio executives liked
answers, not questions!
Orson employed a lot of stylized techniques in ‘Ambersons’,
and they all addressed the theme of the story. The techniques could be neatly
summarized as deep focus, composition in depth, long take and mise-en-scene
composition.
Deep focus photography
The photographer for the film was Stanley Cortez, who was
associated with Gregg Toland, so one should not be surprised that deep focus
photography was employed a lot in ‘Ambersons’. That was Welles’ signature
style, and he used it as a visual motif to stage the actions.
Composition in depth
Another way to play with distance is ‘composition in depth’,
and this technique goes hand-in-hand with deep focus. One can stage objects and characters horizontally
in a frame, and if each of these motifs has a different depth of field, then
the overall result will appear ‘layered’ – as if a number of different,
distinct visual layers can be abstracted from a given frame. To me, the
application of this particular technique, and the assortments of techniques
that was used in the iconic ‘stairway ascending’ scene, addressed the some of
the most important themes in ‘Ambersons’, which will be the focus of my next
article.
(1/2)
by Ed Law
1/7/2015
Film Analysis - 48a
