The Magnificent Ambersons

After watching Citizen Kane, I was drawn to watch the next film directed by Orson Welles, The Magnificent Ambersons, a work based on a novel by Booth Tarkington.  The story line covers the “magnificent” Amberson family, a prominent family in a Midwestern town in the late 1800s, as rising industrialization – most particularly the growing automobile industry – leads to the undoing of their fortunes and the resulting fall from the heights of the family’s prior status.  It is a story about an end of an era, a point that Wells captures in the film’s initial reminiscent scenes of how life was at that time.

            Very similar to Citizen Kane in the use of film technique, The Magnificent Ambersons used many fades, deep focus and long shots that are classic Welles. Shadows and lighting emphasis action and character, creating drama.  While the story line is fairly simple – rich family’s woes followed by loss of fortune and subsequent woes complicated by lost love – it is Welles’ vision and his directing talents that move this film to the category of ‘art.’

            A bit of research into this film indicates that while it received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Film, it was not well-received by the public.  Some reasons offered for this include the idea that audiences in 1942 when the film was released were more in need of lighter entertainment due to the ongoing war and could not or did not wish to relate to the depressing drama of the Amberson family.  Of more interest are the reports that Welles did not complete direction and editing of the film personally as he was in Brazil at the time, working on a piece for the State Department.  There is some disagreement as to how much control he had on the finally released version and whether it would have been a stronger film or a lesser one, had the cuts to the originally long version been made or made differently. Robert Wise, who later directed West Side Story is often said to be the man who completed the final version and, fair or not, is criticized for it.  Most questionable is the uplifting, almost cheesy ending to this film which Welles apparently envisioned differently from the finally released version, with similar dialog but with focused on the consequences of time and aging, not dissimilar to his work on Citizen Kane.

            Despite the film’s box office failure, it is still pure Welles.  His direction to the actors, his use of multiple rooms in the Amberson mansion and that fantastic sleigh ride scene, and his sound technique that likely stemmed from his earlier years in radio, make this film on par with Citizen Kane in many ways.  Some say it was the last of the artistically significant Welles’ pieces in that later films didn’t have the budget allocated as these two works. 

            While critics laud Citizen Kane, it is The Magnificent Ambersons that I found personally more enjoyable and interesting. That makes me in the minority, but to each her own.