The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) Director: Orson Welles
“The magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873…”
★★★★★
In spite of RKO’s notorious hack-job , Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons is still an utterly astounding feat of cinematic splendor. Based on Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name published in 1918 (click here to read my reflection on the novel), this is a beautifully evocative film filled with somber nostalgia and ornate opulence (in particular the opening scenes which reflect upon the steady passage of time have really stuck with me over the years). After considering several other tales for his next film, Welles landed on The Magnificent Ambersons, a novel he once narrated for one of his radio programs with the Mercury Theatre in 1939. And sadly, after the giant controversy surrounding Citizen Kane, plus lackluster early screening reviews for The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles’s relationship with RKO quickly soured. While he winged off to Brazil on behalf of the state department to shoot his next film, The Magnificent Ambersons was significantly edited, trimmed down, and even re-shot (with an entirely new optimistic ending to compensate for the film’s chilly tone). Welles was understandably distraught, as more than an hour of the film footage was cut and destroyed. We can only speculate what might have been had RKO left Welles’s original cut alone and if Bernard Herrmann’s transportive original score had remained untouched (Herrmann threatened legal action if his name was not removed from the film). Apparently, there are still sleuths out there seeking to hunt down an elusive original cut (perhaps one day a dusty cut will emerge after sitting in someone’s attic for decades). Released as a follow-up to his then-controversial magnum opus, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons is once again beautifully shot using deep focus lens techniques, this time by cinematographer Stanley Cortez, with the help of editor Robert Wise. One of my favorite directors of all time, Orson Welles shines bright in this sprawling masterpiece. In later years, while appearing on the Dick Cavett Show, actress Agnes Moorehead (who played Fanny Minafer) recalled that Orson Welles was one of the most exciting and creative directors to work for! She was one of Welles’s actors brought over from Mercury (she was joined by Joseph Cotten and Ray Collins –the latter of whom was the only actor to appear in both the radio and film adaptations).
The Magnificent Ambersons offers a portrait of the fabulously wealthy Amberson family, local aristocrats in a small mid-western town at the turn of the century (much like Indianapolis). The lady of the family, Isabel Amberson (played by Dolores Costello), rejects an offer for courtship from Eugene Morgan, and instead she chooses the boring Wilber Minafer. Together they have a spoiled child, George, a hell-raiser around town (played by Tim Holt, a B-Western film star who also appeared in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre). Neighbors and friends grow tired of “Georgie” and they look forward to a forthcoming day wherein he receives his “comeuppance.” George returns home from college to one of the last great balls in the city hosted by the Ambersons, and he falls in love with Lucy, (played by Anne Baxter) while at the same time ridiculing her father, Eugene Morgan (played by Joseph Cotten who appeared in other Welles films, like Citizen Kane). Eugene is a burgeoning automobile magnate and widower who is back in town after a 20-year hiatus. Eugene is the lead investor in the new “horseless carriage,” device. Indeed, the progress of rapidly industrializing technology is a central theme in the film, and there is a winking little in-joke as an Indianapolis Daily Inquirer article is displayed raising concerns about automobile deaths (the Indianapolis Daily Inquirer was a newspaper owned by Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane). The next day George and Lucy tumble out of a carriage and they are picked up by Eugene in his automobile, much to the frustration of George.
George returns to college but shortly thereafter his father, Wilber, dies and the Amberson family investments have largely gone sour. From this point on, the film becomes noticeably more choppy. Lucy rejects George’s proposal for marriage, meanwhile George has found his mother and Eugene are smitten with one another. Frustrated, George turns Eugene away, and he and his mother decide to travel indefinitely in Europe until she falls seriously ill and they return to Indianapolis, but George does not allow Eugene to be in the presence of his mother. Soon, George’s mother dies and George realizes the distraught order of his family’s wealth. He goes to work at a law firm, but then in order to receive a higher income, he takes a more dangerous job. He is forced to sell the old Amberson mansion and move into an apartment with his Aunt Fanny. Suddenly one day he is hit by a car and both of his legs are broken –his comeuppance has finally arrived though no one is around from the old days to witness his downfall. The heavily edited ending sequence shows a moment of reconciliation between Eugene Morgan and George –it was a scene entirely created by RKO to fabricate a more hopeful ending.
Filming for The Magnificent Ambersons took place in and around Los Angeles, and the large Amberson mansion was entirely constructed with mobile walls to allow for cameras to freely move through scenes (it later served as the set for low budget RKO horror films). In more recent years, the giant stain-glass windows were recovered in storage, covered in dirt and dust, but now they are being cleaned up for historical display. Sadly, actress Dolores Costello was forced to retire from her acting career shortly after filming The Magnificent Ambersons following scarring to her face after years of applying Hollywood make-up (a silent film star, her first husband was John Barrymore). She apparently lived like a recluse on an avocado farm for many years.
Great film.
I bought it for rachel for her bday and we watched it this weekend. So good!
A filmmaker who can’t make a coherent film within the timeframe that can be reasonably expected from even the most avid of moviegoers is no “ genius.” Orson welles received generous , and even exorbitant budgets, but couldn’t come up with a film that wouldn’t require viewers to bring their beds to remain in the movie house in order to view his complete “ masterpieces.” Then he complained that his brilliantly long ( or perhaps tedious) works had been “ butchered.” A man as overrated as he was overweight