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A Final Farewell: The Original Ending to The Magnificent Ambersons
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This is a restaging of Orson Welles's lost ending to The Magnficent Ambersons (1942).
Here, Fanny Minafer, sister-in-law to the once wealthy Ambersons, meets with Eugene Morgan, an old family friend, who has grown rich as an automobile inventor. Tragedy unites them: Fanny's nephew, George, has just been hit by an automobile. An unspoken tension runs between the two, fueled by Fanny's unrequited love for Eugene, who only had eyes for her sister-in-law, Isabel Amberson. Fanny and Eugene meet one last time at the boarding house, in which she now resides.
Mutilated upon release, being reduced from over 2 hours to a skeletal 84-minute runtime, Welles's follow-up to Kane survives only in a fragmented form. The biggest casualty, according to Welles, was the melancholy ending, which repurposed Tarkington's sentimentality to something more akin to Chekov. So important was this finale that Welles himself considered recreating it, with the actors actually having aged into the parts, in the 1970s.
A reinterpretation of the original ending, this does not attempt to slavishly mimic Welles's unique visual style.
Starring: Tyra Mona and Andrew Walters
Here, Fanny Minafer, sister-in-law to the once wealthy Ambersons, meets with Eugene Morgan, an old family friend, who has grown rich as an automobile inventor. Tragedy unites them: Fanny's nephew, George, has just been hit by an automobile. An unspoken tension runs between the two, fueled by Fanny's unrequited love for Eugene, who only had eyes for her sister-in-law, Isabel Amberson. Fanny and Eugene meet one last time at the boarding house, in which she now resides.
Mutilated upon release, being reduced from over 2 hours to a skeletal 84-minute runtime, Welles's follow-up to Kane survives only in a fragmented form. The biggest casualty, according to Welles, was the melancholy ending, which repurposed Tarkington's sentimentality to something more akin to Chekov. So important was this finale that Welles himself considered recreating it, with the actors actually having aged into the parts, in the 1970s.
A reinterpretation of the original ending, this does not attempt to slavishly mimic Welles's unique visual style.
Starring: Tyra Mona and Andrew Walters