Orson Welles considered The Magnificent Ambersons the crucial turning point in his career. He said, "They destroyed Ambersons and it destroyed me." In 1942, while Welles was away, RKO Studios drastically recut the completed film. None of that deleted footage is known to survive.
Now film scholar Robert Carringer has reconstructed Welles's own version of Ambersons, using all available surviving evidence including...