Customer Reviews

The Magnificent Ambersons: A Reconstruction

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This is about as close as we're ever going to get to know how Ambersons was constructed and as such is required reading for any cineaste. However, one should read Carringer's introduction with a bucket of salt. The idea that Welles couldn't complete this rendition of Hamlet because of unresolved conflict with his own family I find a bit hard to swallow. I'd say circumstances (RKO's management shuffle, the war effort, Nelson Rockefeller being a tool, Orson's big mouth/ego) had more effect on the collapse of Ambersons than Welles' mom. Still, well worth the price for the cutting continuity.

At first glance, this looks like a book no Welles fans would want to be without. One has to be cautioned however regarding Carringer's oddly contradictory attitudes towards Welles. He does seem to admire the work, and his article "The scripts of Citizen Kane" did much to counter Pauline Kael's charge that Welles misappropriated writing credits on that film. Whereas she was working from spite, Carringer was working from facts and scholarship. (It can be found in the Citizen Kane Casebook edited by James Naremore.)

But in this and in his book The Making of Citizen Kane, Carringer seems to adopt an antagonistic attitude towards Welles, as if he is trying to transform himself into Kael's heir. He writes from the point of view that if anything good or great is achieved in these two movies, it was in spite of Welles. Furthermore, in every instance of disagreement between Welles and the studio, Carringer systematically argues that RKO was invariably right and Welles wrong. The director may not have been perfect and did make some career and artistic blunders along the way, but Carringer's position is too extreme.

And of course, every critic who disagrees with him is viewed as over-indulgent or a Welles sycophant.

Which is too bad considering this book is the only source to offer the continuity script in its entirety; this material alone is evidence enough to completely discredit Carringer's thesis and to make one deplore even more sharply what we are missing in the butchered version that survives of the film. And as for his 5-cent psychoanalysis of Welles' family relationships and their impact on his professional work, I think we should observe a generous silence about its ludicrousness.

Other critics have proven it's possible to write balanced judgments on Welles, warts and all; Jonathan Rosenbaum, François Thomas and James Naremore among them (although in Naremore's case, the publisher did slap on his first essay the totally ridiculous title of The Magic World of Orson Welles.)

All in all, this book can be appreciated as making available source material unavailable elsewhere, a feat that will probably not be duplicated because of the dispersal of RKO's archives. The critical contents however must be taken with a kilogram of salt. I you can find it cheap, do not hesitate.