The Magnificent Ambersons [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Orson Welles

Overview

Orson Welles' followup to Citizen Kane (1941) was utterly different from Kane in style and texture, but just as brilliant in its own way. Writer/director Welles does not appear on camera, but his voiceover narration superbly sets the stage for the movie's action, which fades in valentine fashion on Amberson Mansion, the most ostentatious dwelling in all of turn-of-century Indianapolis. Its mistress is the haughtily beautiful Isabel Amberson (Dolores Costello). When Isabel's beau, erstwhile inventor Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten), inadvertently humiliates her in public, she breaks off the relationship and marries colorless Wilbur Minafer (Donald Dillaway). The neighbors are certain that, since Isabel can't possibly love Wilbur, she will spoil her children rotten. As it turns out, she has one child, George Minafer (Tim Holt), and that one is enough as far as the rest of Indianapolis is concerned. There are those who live for the day that the arrogant, insufferable George will get his comeuppance. When George returns home from college, his mother and grandfather (Richard Bennett) hold a gala reception in his honor. Among the guests is the older-and-wiser Eugene, now a prosperous automobile manufacturer, and his pretty daughter Lucy (Anne Baxter). George takes to Lucy immediately, but can't warm up to Eugene, especially after learning from his uncle Jack Amberson (Ray Collins) and his maiden aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead) that Eugene and Isabel had once been sweethearts. After the death of Wilbur Minafer, the widowed Eugene feels emboldened enough to propose to Isabel again. This time she is willing, but the obstreperous George refuses to allow his mother to see Eugene. His imperious bullheadedness will lead to tragedy for all concerned--and, at long last, a chastened George Minafer will indeed receive his comeuppance. The film's real villain is not George but that old intangible bugaboo called "Progress." As the automobile age comes to fruition, the elegant, cloistered lifestyle of the Ambersons fades from view, finally disappearing altogether. This is superbly foreshadowed in the "winter outing" sequence (filmed in an L.A. icehouse) in which George's two-horse sleigh is abandoned in favor of Eugene's clunky horseless carriage. Welles evokes performances that his actors seldom (if ever) matched in later years; even the very limited Tim Holt is wholly believable-and even a bit pitiable-as the blinkered George Amberson Minafer. The current version, however, is but a pale shadow of Welles' original concept. Out of time and overbudget, the movie previewed badly and was eventually sliced down to an abrupt 88 minutes (by, among others, editor Robert Wise, who would go on to direct such films as West Side Story and The Sound of Music). Even though the film therefore must be regarded as a marred masterpiece, the remaining two-thirds of Welles' original concept is still a thrilling cinematic experience, especially whenever Agnes Moorehead is on the screen.

Product Details

Release Date:	11/27/2018
UPC:	0715515223515
Original Release:	1942
Rating:	NR
Source:	THE CRITERION COLLECTION, INC
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:28:00
Sales rank:	9,481

Special Features

New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Two audio commentaries, featuring scholars Robert L. Carringer and James Naremore and critic Jonathan Rosembaum; New interviews with film historians Simon Callow and Joseph McBride; New video essays by scholars Fran?ois Thomas and Christopher Husted; Director Orson Welles on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970; Segment from a 1925 silent adaptation of The Magnificent Ambersons; Audio from a 1978 AFI symposium on Welles, and audio interviews with Welles conducted by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich; Two Mercury Theatre radio plays: Seventeen (1938), an adaptation of another Booth Tarkington novel by Welles, and The Magnificent Ambersons (1939); Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Joseph Cotten	Eugene Morgan
Dolores Costello	Isabel Amberson Minafer,Actor
Anne Baxter	Lucy Morgan
Agnes Moorehead	Fanny Amberson
Ray Collins	Jack Amberson
Richard Bennett	Maj. Amberson
Erskine Sanford	Benson
Tim Holt	George Amberson Minafer
J. Louis Johnson	Sam the Butler
Donald Dillaway	Wilbur Minafer
Charles Phipps	Uncle John
Dorothy Vaughan	Woman at Funeral
Elmer Jerome	Man at Funeral
John Elliott	Guest
Nina Guilbert	Guest
Sam Rice	Man at Funeral
Olive Ball	Mary
Kathryn Sheldon	Matron
Anne O'Neal	Mrs. Foster
Henry Roquemore	Hardware Man
Mel Ford	Fred Kinney
Lillian Nicholson	Landlady
Bobby Cooper	George as a Boy
Drew Roddy	Elijah
Jack Baxley	Rev. Smith
Nancy Gates	Girl
James Westerfield	Cop at Accident
Edwin August	Man
Jack Santoro	Barber
Gus Schilling	Drugstore Clerk
Georgia Backus	Matron
Hilda Plowright	Nurse
Bob Pittard	Charlie Johnson
Billy Elmer	House Servant
Maynard Holmes	Citizen
Lew Kelly	Citizen
John McGuire	Young Man
Edward Howard	Chauffeur/Citizen
William Blees	Youth at Accident
Philip Morris	Cop
Louis Hayward	Ballroom Extra
Orson Welles	The Narrator,Narrator
Bob Cooper	George as a Boy
Nina Guilberg	Guest
Bernard Herrmann	Composer
Roy Webb	Composer

Technical Credits

Orson Welles

Booth Tarkington

Orson Welles	Screenwriter,Producer
Vernon L. Walker	Special Effects,Special Effects
Booth Tarkington	Screenwriter

Scene Index

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Editorial Reviews

Some consider Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons one of the finest films ever made, even in the form in which it has been handed down to us. At the time of its production, Orson Welles was the big noise among new young filmmakers, but not a very profitable one. His first movie, Citizen Kane, had generated press and praise, but not profits. RKO, never a profitable studio and in danger of receivership for much of its history, needed The Magnificent Ambersons to be a hit. Welles had shot Ambersons true to Booth Tarkington's novel and elicited sterling performances from his cast. But Tarkington's story -- which Welles deeply loved, having previously dramatized it on radio with himself in the role of George Amberson Minafer -- centered on an insufferable prig, selfish, nasty, and vain. Preview audiences came away disliking the movie because they disliked its central character, brilliantly portrayed by Tim Holt. RKO drastically recut the movie, poisoning its relationship with Welles (and with composer Bernard Herrmann, who came to Welles' defense and ended a promising career at the studio). Holt's George Amberson Minafer was, in many ways, the antecedent of Laurence Harvey's Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), a character described by the closest thing he has to a friend as "impossible to like." And audiences weren't much more ready for Harvey's character in 1962 than they were for Holt's in 1942.