Let us now bow our heads and remember a pair of forlorn films mercilessly butchered by their studios......with the footage showing their directors' original intentions forever destroyed.
We've put these two films together in this post, because of of what we felt were their striking similarities. Both were labors of love for their celebrated directors - Orson Welles and John Huston. Both took their source material from novels of classic Americana.
And for varying reasons, both films ended up disemboweled by the studios (RKO and MGM) who financed and released them.
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) was young Orson Welles follow-up to his spectacular debut film "Citizen Kane". Based on Booth Tarkington's novel about the rise and fall of an aristocratic American family in the early 20th century, Welles once again displayed his dazzling command of cinematic storytelling.
At least in its first 45 minutes or so, you can visualize what this film could have been had not Welles left the country to make another film after production wrapped.......which RKO took full advantage of by eviscerating the film, taking over 50 minutes out of it.
Welles' propulsive editing and staging sets up an ambitious family saga The story's dominated by Tim Holt as the Amberson scion, a spoiled, insufferable brat since birth and his thwarting of the star-crossed romance between his widowed mother and her lifelong admirer (Joseph Cotton), a maker of that new fangled machine, the automobile.
The Ambersons' reversals of fortune and Cotton's long denied quest for the love of his life constitute the second half of the film, which studio mangling and patchwork reshoots rendered the film a collapsed, shapeless mess. And there'd be no chance of rescuing and restoring the film......RKO simply destroyed the celluloid ...(the cheapest commodity in movie making)
And 9 years later, the same kind of heartbreaking vandalism would befall another one of Hollywood's most talented directors.....
The Red Badge Of Courage (1951) was director-writer John Huston's adaptation of Stephen Crane's Civil War novel........a book that dealt with a terrified young Union solder (Audi Mruphy) struggling to conquer his fear and find enough internal fortitude and bravery to face potential death on the battlefield.
And what a stroke of casting genius did Huston perform in using the baby-faced Murphy, whose record still stands as the most decorated soldier of World War 2.
Hollywood turned Murphy into a star of low budget westerns after he returned from the war with a chest full of medals and probably the all time worst case of PTSD imaginable, having fought and survived through the most bloodiest battles across Europe.
John Huston recognized that Murphy, though never a trained professional actor, was the ultimate perfect choice to play Henry Fleming, the Union recruit who fears his first taste of battle will make him flee in fear.
And flee he does, along with several of his comrades, but returns with renewed courage and a fervor for the fight that stuns his fellow soldiers and commanding officers.
Huston considered the original 2 hour cut of the film his best work ever, but all that's left of the it today is a mere 70 minutes. MGM studio bosses, who never liked the idea making the movie in the first place, sliced it to ribbons......and just like the discarded footage of "The Magnificent Ambersons", the missing scenes were tossed out like trash, never retrievable by Huston or anyone else.
What's left of the movie? A stunning, almost semi-documentary depiction of Civil War combat and the terrible toll it took on all its participants......with sensitive, skilled performance by Murphy and the equally amateur actor Bill Mauldin, who went on to claim greater fame a renowned political cartoonist. Supporting them is an incredible cast of instantly recognizable character actors like Royal Dano, John Dierkes, Arthur Hunnicut and Andy Devine.
As horribly treated as both these films were, there's enough pure talent, creativity and even genius that still shines through.......which makes both a 3 star (***) 'must see' for anyone who loves classic movies. No matter what studio crimes were committed against them, we still say don't miss them......
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