The Magnificent Ambersons (film)

The Magnificent Ambersons
theatrical poster by Norman Rockwell
Directed by	Orson Welles
Produced by	Orson Welles
Screenplay by	Orson Welles
Based on	The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Narrated by	Orson Welles
Starring	Joseph Cotten Dolores Costello Anne Baxter Tim Holt Agnes Moorehead Ray Collins
Music by	Bernard Herrmann
Cinematography	Stanley Cortez
Editing by	Robert Wise
Studio	Mercury Productions
Distributed by	RKO Radio Pictures Inc.
Release date(s)	July 10, 1942 (US)
Running time	88 minutes 148 minutes (original) 131 minutes (preview)
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$850,000 (est)

The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1942 American drama film written and directed by Orson Welles. His second feature film, it is based on the 1918 novel of the same name by Booth Tarkington and stars Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins. Welles provides the voiceover narration.

Welles lost control of the editing of The Magnificent Ambersons to RKO, and the final version released to audiences differed significantly from his rough cut of the film. More than an hour of footage was cut by the studio, and a new, happier ending was shot and substituted. Although Welles's extensive notes for how he wished the film to be cut have survived, the excised scenes were lost.

Even in its radically altered form, the 1942 film is often regarded as among the best American films ever made, a distinction it shares with Welles' first film, Citizen Kane.

In 1991, The Magnificent Ambersons was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film was included in Sight and Sound's 1972 list of the top ten greatest films ever made, and again in 1982's list.

Plot

Set in the early 1900s, the film tells the story of the Ambersons, an upper-class Indianapolis family, focusing on Major Amberson's grandson, George (Tim Holt). At the beginning of the film, George is home on break from college, and his mother Isabel (Dolores Costello) and grandfather (Richard Bennett) hold a reception in his honor. Among the guests are the widowed Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten), a prosperous automobile manufacturer who has just returned to town after a twenty-year absence, and his daughter, Lucy (Anne Baxter). George instantly takes to the beautiful and charming Lucy, but seems to scorn and dislike Eugene almost instinctively.

The patriarch of the Amberson-Minafer family, Wilbur Minafer (Donald Dillaway), dies. Eugene's automobile plant continues to prosper, and soon he builds a mansion to challenge the magnificence of the Ambersons'. During a dinner party, George tells Eugene that he thinks "automobiles are a useless nuisance, which had no business being invented." The other family members are taken aback by his rude demeanor, but Eugene interjects by saying that George may turn out to be right, since he knows that automobiles are going to drastically alter human civilization, for better or worse. George then learns from his uncle Jack Amberson (Ray Collins) and aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead) that Eugene and Isabel had once been an item. He is particularly enraged by his aunt's implication that not only did Isabel always love Eugene — even during her life with George's father, Wilbur — but that people in town are gossiping about this juicy tidbit.

Eugene continues to court Isabel and then decides to ask for her hand in marriage. Sensing the developing intensity of their relationship, George takes control and rebuffs a planned visit from Eugene at the door of the Amberson mansion. Isabel's love for George overrides her love for Eugene, so she complies with his demands, even though she is aware of what has transpired and that George is trying to keep her from Eugene. George takes his mother on a world tour, ostensibly to get away from the "scandalous" talk in the town of her love for Eugene even prior to her husband's death, but clearly also simply to remove her from the possibility of a relationship with him. Before leaving for Europe, George attempts to get Lucy to reveal sorrow that he is leaving, perhaps forever, but she feigns cheerful insouciance concealing her true pain.

George and his mother travel, then live in Europe for a while, until her illness compels their return to the United States, where George still acts as gatekeeper for those who wish to see the dying Isabel. Eugene comes to visit her, and George refuses him as Isabel lies on her deathbed. Shortly after her death, her grief-stricken father dies. For reasons that are not made clear in the movie (but which Tarkington's novel makes clear stem from unfortunate investments in cotton mills and a predilicition for opium), George's grandfather does not leave what remains of his estate to anyone in the family, leaving George and the other family members to fend for themselves financially. Lucy does not reconcile with George, and tells her father a story about a Native American chieftan who was "pushed out on a canoe into the sea" when he became too obnoxious and overbearing (used as an analogy for George).

As the entire family's fortune has been depleted, George immediately decides to give up his job at a law firm and go work in a factory which pays more, in order to take care of Aunt Fanny, who has descended into psychosis. The film ends with George wandering around an increasingly polluted city, confused and disoriented by how fast industrial civilization has risen around him.

An additional ending shot without Welles' consent shows George getting injured in an automobile accident, and Eugene later reconciling with him at the hospital.

Background and production

Tarkington's novel had previously been filmed in 1925 by Vitagraph Pictures, starring Cullen Landis, Alice Calhoun and Allan Forrest, and directed by David Smith. Welles adapted it for radio in 1939 for the Mercury Theatre of the Air. The only actor from that production who also appeared in the film was Ray Collins.

The Magnificent Ambersons was in production at RKO's Gower Street studios in Los Angeles from 28 October 1941 through 22 January 1942 on a set constructed like a real house, but in which walls could be rolled back, raised or lowered to allow the camera to appear to pass through them in a continuous take. RKO later used many of the film's sets for its low-budget films, including the series of horror films produced by Val Lewton. Location shooting took place at various places around the Los Angeles area, including Big Bear Lake, the San Bernardino National Forest and East Los Angeles. Snow scenes were shot in the Union Ice Company ice house in downtown L.A. The film was made on an estimated budget of $850,000.

The original rough cut of the film was approximately 135 minutes in length. Welles felt that the film needed to be shortened and, after receiving a mixed response from a March 17 preview audience in Pomona, film editor Robert Wise removed several minutes from it. The film was previewed again, but the audience's response did not improve.

Because Welles had conceded his original contractual right to do the final cut in a negotiation with RKO over a film that Welles was obliged to direct but never did, RKO was able to take over the editing of the film once Welles had delivered a first cut. This resulted in RKO deleting over 40 additional minutes and reshooting the ending in late April and early May, directed by assistant director Fred Fleck, Robert Wise, and Jack Moss, the business manager of Welles' Mercury Theater. The retakes replaced Welles' original ending with a happier one that broke significantly with the film's elegiac tone. The reshot ending is, however, identical to the ending of the novel.

Welles did not approve of the cuts, but because he was simultaneously working in Brazil on another project for RKO – Nelson Rockefeller had personally asked him to make a film in Latin America as part of the wartime Good Neighbor Policy – his attempts to protect his version ultimately failed. Details of Welles' conflict over the editing are included in the 1993 documentary about the Brazilian film It's All True.

The negatives for the excised portions of The Magnificent Ambersons were later destroyed in order to free vault space. A print of the rough cut was sent to Welles in Brazil, but it has yet to be found and is generally considered to be lost along with the prints from the previews. Robert Wise maintained that the original was not better than the edited version.

The Magnificent Ambersons is one of the earliest films in movie history in which nearly all the credits are spoken by an off-screen voice and not shown printed onscreen — a technique being used before only by French director and player Sacha Guitry. The only credits shown onscreen are the RKO logo, "A Mercury Production by Orson Welles", and the film's title, shown at the very beginning of the picture. At the end of the film, Orson Welles's voice announces all the main credits. Each actor in the film is shown as Welles announces their name. As he speaks each technical credit, a machine is shown performing that function — e.g., when Welles announces the name of the film editor, an editing machine appears onscreen, and when he announces "Sound recording by", a sound recording console is working onscreen. Notably missing from the list of spoken credits is any mention of the music written by Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann strongly objected to his score being recut and portions replaced with music by Roy Webb, and demanded his name be removed from the credits. The movie also included music not by Herrmann - for example, an arrangement of the obscure Parisian waltz Toujours ou jamais by Émile Waldteufel.

Some of Herrmann's music that was edited out of the final cut, such as the "Second Nocturne", was later reused in his opera Wuthering Heights (1943–51). Coincidentally, Orson Welles was invited to direct the premiere production of the opera in Portland, Oregon in 1982, but he declined.

The film features what could be considered an inside joke, as news of the rise of automobile accidents is featured prominently on the front page of the Indianapolis Daily Inquirer, part of the fictional chain of newspapers owned by mogul Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane. Also appearing on the front page is the column, "Stage News", by Jed Leland, with a photo of Cotten, who portrayed the character in the earlier film.

Cast

• Joseph Cotten as Eugene
• Dolores Costello as Isabel
• Anne Baxter as Lucy
• Tim Holt as George
• Agnes Moorehead as Fanny
• Ray Collins as Jack
• Erskine Sanford as Roger Bronson
• Donald Dillaway as Wilbur Minafer
• Richard Bennett as Maj. Amberson
• Orson Welles as narrator

Reception

The film has always received positive reviews from critics. It is reported by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes that 96% of the critics gave the film a positive review with only one negative. Despite not being as wildly acclaimed as Citizen Kane, it is considered one of Welles' best works. It and Citizen Kane were his only films to be nominated for Best Picture.

Awards

Wins

• New York Film Critics Circle Awards: NYFCC Award; Best Actress, Agnes Moorehead; 1942.
• National Board of Review: Best Acting, Tim Holt & Agnes Moorehead, 1942

Academy Award Nominations

• Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Agnes Moorehead
• Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration - Albert S. D'Agostino, A. Roland Fields and Darrell Silvera
• Best Black-and-White Cinematography - Stanley Cortez
• Best Picture - Orson Welles

Home video releases

• 1985 RKO Home Video, VHS (2073), 1985
• 1986 The Voyager Company (The Criterion Collection), Laserdisc, 1986 — audio commentary by Robert Carringer
• 2011 Warner Home Video, Region 1 DVD, September 13, 2011 (Amazon.com exclusive); January 31, 2012 (general release) ISBN 0-7806-7648-3

Soundtrack releases

A CD of the soundtrack to this film was released in 1990 in the US. The pieces were totally re-recorded.

All pieces by Bernard Herrmann. Re-recorded by the Australian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Tony Bremner.

1. "Theme and Variations/George's Homecoming" (07:18)
2. "Snow Ride" (03:05)
3. "The Door/Death and Youth" (00:56)
4. "Toccata" (01:12)
5. "Pleasure Trip" (01:06)
6. "Prelude" (01:30)
7. "First Nocturne" (04:08)
8. "Garden Scene" (01:14)
9. "Fantasia" (02:11)
10. "Scene Pathetique" (02:19)
11. "Waiting" (01:32)
12. "Ostinato" (01:52)
13. "First Letter Scene" (03:25)
14. "Second Letter Scene/Romanza" (02:12)
15. "Second Nocturne" (03:22)
16. "Departure/Isabel's Death" (01:47)
17. "First Reverie/Second Reverie" (02:40)
18. "The Walk Home" (02:49)
19. "Garden Music" (02:59)
20. "Elegy" (01:23)
21. "End Title" (02:20)

Remake

A TV movie was made in 2002 using the Welles screenplay and his editing notes. It was directed by Alfonso Arau and starred Madeleine Stowe, Bruce Greenwood, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Gretchen Mol and Jennifer Tilly. This film does not, however, strictly follow Welles's screenplay. It lacks several scenes that are in the 1942 version, and also has essentially the same happy ending.

References

Notes

Explanatory notes

Citations

External links

• The Magnificent Ambersons website
• The Magnificent Ambersons at the Internet Movie Database
• The Magnificant Ambersons at the TCM Movie Database
• The Magnificent Ambersons at AllRovi
• The Magnificent Ambersons at Rotten Tomatoes