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| The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) | |||||||||
| Background
This film's screenplay was written by Welles in only nine days. He had first adapted the story for a CBS-radio broadcast (Campbell's Playhouse) with his Mercury Theatre in the fall of 1939, featuring Walter Huston as Eugene Morgan and Welles himself as George Minafer. He used his regulars from Mercury Theatre within this production: Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins (the only actor in the film who also appeared in the radio version). Although the beautiful, near-masterpiece film is rich in cinematic technique (overlapping dialogue, deep focus cinematography and magnificent lighting, fluid dolly and truck shots, innovative crane shots, iris in-out openings and closing of scenes, long takes, etc.) and layered with complexity and subtle meaning, in its initial preview screening, it was a disastrous flop for its emotionally-downbeat mood, and because of its focal point: a spoiled brat (played by B-Western actor Tim Holt) of the town's richest family and later, as a conceited young man. Ambersons' public previews (in Pomona, California) were considered a disaster due to its being inappropriately double-billed in its premiere showing with a B-comedy starring Lupe Velez titled Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost (1942), and because of its original depressing ending. Worried about its financial viability and the unreleasable nature of the film, RKO studios, in Welles' absence while he was in Brazil, proceeded to drastically cut the film, from its originally-edited, first-cut length of 131 minutes down to a mere 88 minutes of both original and reshot footage. More than 50 minutes of original footage were removed - over a third of Welles' original footage, by shortening extended tracking shots, and eliminating or drastically abbreviating other scenes. With a tacked-on, optimistic ending, and with the addition of rewritten/reshot portions of film without the director's approval (under the supervision of editor Robert Wise), it was re-released, and all surviving footage from the original film was destroyed (to prevent any efforts at reconstruction). The remaining, damaged skeleton of a film suffers from disconnectedness and choppiness after its first half, but the film is still remarkable for its acting and visual style, Welles' memorable voice-over narration, Stanley Cortez' cinematographic use of light and shadow, Bernard Herrmann's uncredited musical score, and the extraordinary set construction for the interior of the Ambersons' mansion. [Other films in American film history have been similarly 'ruined' and damaged by studio intervention:
In spite of controversies surrounding the film, it was still nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Agnes Moorehead), Best Black and White Cinematography (Stanley Cortez), and Best Black and White Interior Decoration. The story of the film spans two generations (about twenty-five years), and is set at the turn of the century in an upper-middle-class Midwestern American town [Indianapolis, Indiana - identified by the front page of the Indianapolis Inquirer at the end of the film]. This tale is set against the social decline, ruin and fall of the aristocratic Amberson family at the turn of the century with the coming of the industrial age and the rise of the automobile (and the prosperous Morgan family). Industrial and technological progress parallels the decline of the fortunes of the wealthy Amberson family. The film is centered on the ill-fated, middle-aged romance between a struggling (and ultimately prosperous) horseless carriage inventor/manufacturer (Eugene Morgan) and a beautiful, self-less, widowed Amberson matriarch-heiress (Isabel Amberson Minafer). Her selfish, buggy-driving young son (George Amberson Minafer) impedes their pairing and denies her mother's death-bed longing to see him again. A sub-plot chronicles the way in which the insufferable son courts and falls in love with Eugene's daughter Lucy (Anne Baxter), but when she insists that he choose a productive career, he breaks off the relationship. Ultimately, he receives his "come-uppance." The revised ending, in an about-face, infers that Eugene will accept an impoverished and disabled George as his 'son-in-law'. One of the film's posters briefly described the main characters:
The story was later remade in 2001 at 150 minutes by director Alfonso Arau, aired on cable TV's A & E Network, with stars Bruce Greenwood, Madeleine Stowe, Jonathan Rhys-Davies, James Cromwell, and Jennifer Tilly. The StoryStark white letters on two black backgrounds in two title cards announce:
After fading to another black screen, Orson Welles in an impressive, radio-announcer style voice-over narrates nostalgic segments taken from the first portion of Tarkington's literary work. In the film's prologue (first ten minutes), the outer perimeter of the frames are edged or rimmed with a soft-focus, faded, vignetted effect, suggesting the time period and its fashions and giving the look of old faded photographs in an album. In the film's short beginning, all the major characters are economically introduced. The tone of the eloquent, beautiful narration chronicles youthful nostalgia and the changing pace of life in society. The film begins with a memory-image of a disappearing, magnificent age - from an earlier, gentler era of agrarianism and a landed aristocracy that was fast being replaced by the growth of industrialism, urbanism, and an industrial bourgeoisie. Welles' magisterial narration is in the left column, and the action of the film is described in the right column:
[This next scene should have immediately followed the men's fashion montage in the prologue, with Eugene dressing himself up - and leaving his front door - to look good and call for Isabel after the embarrassing incident on her front lawn.]
Eugene Morgan walks along the street (Amberson Blvd.) in daylight. He bears a smartly-wrapped gift package under his arm for a lady. At the Amberson gate, he doffs his hat toward "us" and toward various townsfolk. Like a Greek chorus [one of whom is Agnes Moorehead who plays Aunt Fanny], they narratively comment on the many splendors of the Amberson dwelling, inhabited by the richest family in the town:
Eugene approaches the Amberson's front door with a frosted panel and rings the bell. He has come to call on the beautiful Isabel Amberson (Dolores Costello, wife of John Barrymore) again, the only daughter of Major Amberson. Sam (J. Louis Johnson), the black butler who answers the door informs him that Isabel is "not home." On a second attempt with a bouquet of flowers, he is again rejected and told: "No sir. Miss Amberson ain't at home to you, Mr. Morgan." The group of anonymous bystanders, again functioning like a Greek chorus outside the house that gossips about the public and private lives of the Ambersons, describe how the proud, powerful Amberson family disapproves of Eugene's antics and awkward courtship (and his non-aristocratic status):
Isabel is described as "a delightful-looking young lady"- she is also being courted a dependable and respectable, but dull, pallid, colorless and passionless gentleman named Wilbur Minafer (Don Dillaway). At the wheel of his new experimental "horseless carriage," Eugene - an industrial pioneer, sputters the machine into view, bringing another bouquet of flowers for his sweetheart, but he again suffers rejection and disappointment from her outside an ice cream shop. [After his frustrated but hopeful attempt to win Isabel's love, Eugene disappears from the film for awhile, as the story follows instead the life of Isabel's adored progeny - George.] Within a barber shop (a typical site for male gossip), Uncle Jack (Ray Collins) turns around toward the camera from the barber's chair and describes Wilbur to the audience: "Wilbur? Wilbur Minafer? I never thought he'd get her. Well, what do ya know? Well, Wilbur may not be any Apollo, as it were, but he's a steady young business man." A neighbor of the Ambersons, an underwear-dressed Mrs. Foster (Anne O'Neal) gossips to a group of women in a dressmaker's shop (a typical site for female gossip) about the planned Amberson-Minafer marriage - a love-less marriage of convenience after Eugene's disgraceful and clumsy courtship:
As time passes, her prophetic prediction about Isabel's marriage (and child) is close to the truth:
Although there is "only one" child - he is a spoiled, insufferable, hateful, daredevil brat dressed in velveteen and with golden ringlets in his hair. Young George Minafer (Bobby Cooper) - [he is not an Amberson] is introduced while riding recklessly through town in a tiny carriage, whipping his buggy pony. Careening by, he upsets a gardener with a hoe. Although indulged and adored by his mother, everyone in town longs to see George receive his ultimate "come-uppance":
The words of the off-screen narrator are questioned by a married couple in the street:
When derisively called "girlie curlie" by the son of the local lawyer Benson (Erskine Sanford), the pair fight and wrestle on the lawyer's front lawn. Benson views the scrappy fight from a window, exasperatedly rapping on the glass: "Boy! Boy!" After he comes out and drags the two boys apart, George rebelliously punches him in the stomach when Benson calls him a "disgrace" and a "bad little boy." As the scene cuts, he loudly and angrily tells the parent to "Go to ..." [The word 'Hell' is blatantly censored as Benson shouts back "What?!"] In the garden of the Amberson mansion after the fight, George (wearing a kilt and tam-o'-shanter) is reprimanded by his parents and aged patriarch Major Amberson (Richard Bennett) as he stands formally in front of them. [The characters in the scene look like tableaux figures posed before an artistic backdrop of an old painting.] George, positioned in the foreground, dominates the scene and shows total disregard for his accusers or family behind him. Wilbur, squeezed to the right side of the frame, reads only a sentence from a letter written by a concerned citizen about George's foul use of language: "This was heard not only by myself but by my wife and the lady who lives next door." Taking center stage in a lordly manner, George conceitedly and haughtily denounces the neighbor as a "liar," "story-teller" and as "riff-raff." After inaccurately referring to himself as an Amberson, he causes his grandfather to laugh boisterously: "Grandpa wouldn't wipe his shoe on that old storyteller...I mean, none of us Ambersons wouldn't have anything to do with them. I'll bet if he wanted to see any of us, he'd have to go around to the side door." Although his doting, sheltering mother requests that he never use bad language again, George half-heartedly assents to her wishes - with a mischievous last word:
During the holidays, George Minafer (Tim Holt) returns at age twenty as a sophomore from his schooling without any change in his arrogant personality and air of superiority - he passes through town again like a charioteer in a horse and buggy, whipping one of the bystanders: "...nothing about him encouraged any hope that he had received his come-uppance." A ball is held at the Amberson mansion in George's honor and as an old friend of the family, Eugene is invited to the winter's social function - the last magnificent Amberson occasion:
[From this point on until much later in the film, the voice-over narration ceases.] Eugene Morgan returns to his hometown after eighteen years' absence as a widower, bringing his now-grown, attractive daughter Lucy Morgan (Anne Baxter in her film debut) back to the town where he was born and to the place where he was previously denied admission. In a long, flowing dolly/tracking shot, Eugene and Lucy enter from the snowy outside into the two front doors of the exquisite, splendid mansion the night of the lavish party - winddraft-swept and with the sound of tinkling crystal chandeliers and Christmas tree ornaments. When Eugene is reunited with Isabel in the hallway, he obviously still retains his love for her, and she with him. |
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The
Magnificent Ambersons (1942) is the legendary Orson Welles'
second film - another audacious masterpiece. It was produced,
directed, and scripted (but not acted in) by Welles, a follow-up
film one year after his masterful classic