The profile also explains why "Ambersons," while much less famous than Welles' first film "Citizen Kane," remains so tantalizing - Welles himself claimed it was a "much better picture" than "Kane," but after a disastrous preview screening, the studio cut 43 minutes from the film, added an abrupt and unconvincing happy ending, and eventually destroyed the excised footage to make space in its vaults.
Amazon is planning to use artificial intelligence to recreate destroyed footage from Orson Welles' 1942 film "The Magnificent Ambersons" - but the late directors' estate is calling bull. In a statement to Variety, a spokesperson for David Reeder, whose Reeder Brand Management handles Welles' estate on behalf of the auteur's daughter Beatrice, said that the family hadn't been informed of the project, which is slated to generate with AI the final 43 minutes of the film.
Said film was Welles's follow-up to Citizen Kane, and studio RKO infamously snipped over half an hour from Welles's cut of the film and altered the ending. The lost footage was subsequently destroyed; in a 2018 essay, Jonathan Lethem said of the version of Ambersons that exists, "how can it be that the themes of the film so profoundly conspire with the ache its ruination induces in the viewer?"
