The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

Tim Holt and Anne Baxter

''The Magnificent Ambersons' is a dramatic movie made in 1942, written and directed by Orson Welles, and starring Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins. Welles himself provides the voiceover narration in this, his second feature film. The movie is generally regarded as another Welles masterpiece and was his follow up to his masterly movie debut the previous year with 'Citizen Kane'.

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Controversy surrounded the control and editing of the movie and the final version, with an artificially happy ending added and more than an hour of footage cut by RKO, differed considerably from Welles's own intention.

Even in its much altered form, the film is often regarded as among the best American films ever made, as is Welles's first film, 'Citizen Kane'. The film was 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.

In 1991, 'The Magnificent Ambersons' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

As with 'Citizen Kane', Welles revelled in new cinematic techniques and used them in his new movie. The set of the Amberson's mansion was constructed like a real house, but with walls which could be rolled back, raised or lowered to allow the camera to appear to pass through them in one continuous take. He similarly used such innovations as overlapping dialogue, deep-focus photography, flowing tracking and dolly shots, crane shots and long takes.

Although now considered a masterpiece the film was a disaster on its preview showing. The overall atmosphere of the movie is one of loss, of a way of life that is gone forever, and the original unhappy ending was offputting to wartime audiences seeking a more upbeat cinematic escape. RKO had invested a million dollars in the picture and they took control of the final edit away from Welles. Eventually, about 50 minutes was cut from the original movie, and some scenes including the original sad ending were re-written and shot by others, all in Welles' absence. No surviving footage from the original film has ever been found.

The plot of 'The Magnificent Ambersons' covers two generations and is set in a middle-class Mid-Western American town at the turn of the century. A number of dramatic stories tell the tale of the decline and fall of the aristocratic Amberson family in direct contrast with the rise in fortunes of the Morgan family with the coming of the industrial age. The Morgans become wealthy and prosperous and eventually become the rescuers of the Ambersons.