WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Orson Welles Meets AI in a Restoration of The Magnificent Ambersons — and Its Lost Ending.
The lost 43 minutes of Orson Welles‘ “The Magnificent Ambersons” is the holy grail of cinema. The legend goes that after a bad test screening, RKO tacked on a happy ending and chopped the film from 131 minutes to 88. The missing minutes were melted for their silver nitrate, but cinephiles have spent years seeking a print that retained the the footage; TCM even sponsored a trip to Brazil in pursuit of a complete print.
Like other efforts, Brazil didn’t pan out. Welles believed that the studio butchered a movie that would be seen as greater than his debut, “Citizen Kane,” but would he have used generative AI if it offered the possibility of recreating what he lost?
Showrunner, which bills itself as the “Netflix of AI,” is either betting Welles would (or, has the hubris not to bother with the question). It is using “The Magnificent Ambersons” to develop its latest model, FILM-1, which Showrunner hopes will let people generate lifelike short films.
Working with Brian Rose, who spent the last five years trying to recreate the film with charcoal drawings, physical models of the sets, and researching storyboards and screenplay drafts, Showrunner will spend next two years to get as close as possible to Welles’ vision.
“Perhaps in its reconstructed form, we will all say, in the words of an audience card at the disastrous preview in Pomona that ended the film’s chances: ‘I think that this is the best picture that I have ever seen,’” Showrunner CEO Edward Saatchi said in a statement to IndieWire.
Or perhaps not. But it was inevitable that sooner or later, someone would use AI in an attempt to restore Welles’ original ending to Ambersons. I’m extremely apprehensive about how this will turn out, but I can’t wait to see the results.
For a look at how to do it right — check out Walter Murch’s re-editing of Welles’ 1957 classic b-movie, Touch of Evil, using a 58-page memo Welles wrote after another film was yanked away from him by meddling studio executives, a topic I explored at length in my recent review of Murch’s new book, Suddenly Something Clicked.