The Magnificent Ambersons Are The Centerpiece of A Well-Done Orson Welles Directorial Effort

For any director, doing a follow-up directorial project to a particularly acclaimed piece of work is a daunting prospect, one that some filmmakers have exceled in (like Marielle Heller) while other filmmakers (like Dan Gilroy) found more mixed results in the same scenario. For Orson Welles, this was a particularly tricky scenario for him back in the early 1940's as he was preparing his directorial follow-up to a little-known movie called Citizen Kane. Though plagued by controversy in its initial release, Citizen Kane was still garnering acclaim and had set the bar high for whatever he did next, which turned out to be a motion picture adaptation of The Magnificent Ambersons.

Based on the Booth Tarkington book of the same name, The Magnificent Ambersons, like Citizen Kane, is about how childhood experiences impact a human being well into adulthood. Where it was childhood misery and woe that informed Charles Foster Kane though, the lead character of The Magnificent Ambersons, George Amberson (played as an adult by Tim Holt) had a childhood where he got everything he could desire, the youngster was spoiled rotten and that ended up influencing his adult personality greatly. Now a grown man, who belongs to the wealthy Amberson family, who expects the world to conform to his desires, he has taken a dislike to automobile investor Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten).

Of course, this being a story set in the early years of the 20th century, Morgan being one of the first people to see the potential in automobiles means he's set for success which only spurs on George's childish rivalry with him, as does Eugene's romantic infatuation with George's mother. All of this seething resentment from George means the story inevitably takes on a morose turn as George falls deeper and deeper into misery. The script (penned by Welles, who also directs, produces and narrates this production) is like a Greek tragedy set in 1910's America, one where a protagonist is doomed due to his own petulant behavior, George has brought his inevitably messy fate upon himself. 

It's a pretty interesting story that I couldn't help but feel like would have been all the more compelling if it had run just a touch longer. At only 88 minutes, The Magnificent Ambersons runs at not quite a breakneck speed but certainly a quicker tempo that had me yearning for more opportunities for quiet sequences that would allow the melancholy of the piece to really linger in the air. It's pretty infamous by now that Orson Welles had to cut a whole bunch of sequences at the behest of Warner Bros. executives who wanted a more upbeat movie (The Magnificent Ambersons was the Suicide Squad of its day in that regard) and I'd be curious to see if those scenes, if they're ever recovered, give the story some more room to allows its characters and especially its atmosphere time to breathe.

That's really the biggest issue I can I say have with this otherwise well-made project though, The Magnificent Ambersons truly delivers in a number of key respects. Most notably, the acting in it is great across the board, particularly Agnes Moorehead as Aunt Fanny, a character dripping with a lifetime's worth of realistic woe thanks to Moorehead's remarkable performance. Tim Holt also does fine work lending unique qualities to the well-worn archetype of the bitter wealthy large adult son, while Ray Collins, playing Jack Amberson, also stuck out in my mind afterwards with his quietly authentic turn as someone who keeps trying to give George Amberson sage advice to no avail.

Both Holt and Collins factor into a scene that demonstrates some of the great blocking that's evident throughout The Magnificent Ambersons, with Welles having both characters, Holt in the foreground and Collins in the bathtub in the background, reflected in a mirror and engaging in an extended conversation. The way this single conversation is filmed finds a clever way of making sure both of these individuals can be captured in a single frame without making the image feel too crowded. Welles shows off that kind of remarkable ability to plan out and execute such thoughtful blocking all throughout the motion picture and it's just one of numerous ways The Magnificent Ambersons, though nowhere near the level of quality obtained by Citizen Kane, still secures its place as a noteworthy directorial effort from Orson Welles in its own right.