Originally, Film was meant to run nearly thirty minutes. Eight of those minutes would be one very long shot in which a number of actors would make their only appearance. Toland's work was so important to Welles that he gave his cameraman equal billing to himself. Despite the abundant expertise of our group, the extremely difficult shot was ruined by a stroboscopic effect that caused the images to jump around. Today it would probably be much easier to achieve the effects we wanted to capture.
Technology is now on our side.
Then, the problems proved too much for our group of very talented people. We went on without that shot. Beckett solved the problem of this incipient disaster by removing the scene from the script. Sam was incredible. Far from blaming anything on the limitations and mistakes of those around him, he blamed his own material, himself.