flawed magnificence: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

Much as I’m a fan of Orson Welles, I don’t consider myself an uncritical admirer. Case in point: I’ve never been able to warm to The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles’s ill-fated follow-up to ‘the greatest movie of all time,’ Citizen Kane. Indeed, I don’t share the reverence for TMA held by a sizeable cadre of Welles devotees and scholars. I caught it again recently after a hiatus of about thirty years and have the same reaction: I much prefer Kane, Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, and Othello. I include in this group also Jane Eyre and Journey Into Fear, as both films have a decidedly Welles-like look and feel, though technically neither was directed by Welles despite his pivotal acting role in each (some commentators claim Welles as an uncredited quasi-producer of Jane Eyre).

I explain away, to myself anyway, that my muted response to Ambersons must be due to its infamous evolution: while Welles was away in Brazil in the spring of 1942 working on his similarly ill-fated Latin-American epic It’s All True, RKO famously took Ambersons out of Welles’s hands, mostly because of lukewarm to negative reception by preview audiences, and proceeded to trim it substantially. What resulted was a much edited (i.e. forty-five minutes shorter) version, supervised by Robert Wise, which is what we have left today. Of course anything by Orson Welles is worth a look, and even a heavily cut Magnificent Ambersons has much to recommend: it’s generally well acted (Agnes Moorehead is the standout performance), has all sorts of quintessentially Wellesian touches, especially the visuals, and moreover gives a good recreation of a folksy, mythologized fin de siècle (middle) America.

For me the best part of Magnificent Ambersons is the grand staircase that was so effectively recycled in Cat People and The Seventh Victim by RKO’s then resident other genius, Val Lewton. By the way, can it be that the fresh faced Tim Holt as our singularly unappealing hero is the same actor who played the grizzled prospector of only a few years later in Treasure of the Sierra Madre?

A major flaw of the Warner DVD that I watched is the lack of any bonus features. A film with so many historical and Wellesian resonances screams out for extras, thus the lack is a true missed opportunity and all the more regrettable. (Update: I understand the recent Criterion version has a generous helping of special features, including two audio commentaries. Hooray!).

Ambersons then is largely a Kane retread, but not as good, and certainly doesn’t have anything approaching Kane’s life-affirming panache. And for all its undoubted, if erratic, technical brilliance, TMA seems at heart a drawing room melodrama, and a pretty turgid one at that. Then again it took me a while to appreciate Touch of Evil, and now it’s one of my all time favorites, so perhaps it’s best to leave the jury out on Ambersons. Thus, for now, a mild thumbs up, mostly for production design and the striking visuals.

Further reading: Simon Callow, Orson Welles, v.2: Hello Americans, Penguin Books, 2006, pp. 24-38, 86-91, 107-112.