I wanted to love it as a classic, but for me, 'The Magnificent Ambersons' fell well short of that. There are certainly positive aspects: Director Orson Welles was an artist and there are several beautiful shots, camera angles, and tracking sequences that are nice to see. Joseph Cotten is full of grace as an automobile inventor who loves an Amberson widow, but has to contend with her hothead son (Tim Holt), who is as spoiled as they come. The scene where he calmly and rationally responds to an attack on cars is good. It's ironic that Holt's character loves Cotten's daughter in turn, and Anne Baxter plays that part well, including a scene where she feigns indifference to his leaving town and toys with him, even though it's killing her inside. Lastly, Agnes Moorehead turns in probably the best performance in the film as the boy's frustrated aunt.
On the other hand, the main character - the spoiled, entitled son – is so unlikeable that it makes watching often unpleasant. The film feels emotionally sterile, and there is little believability in the connections between characters. There is a dark bleakness that pervades the film, in part because of the story of this family's fall from grace while the world changes around them, but also in part because of Welles' heavy-handed treatment. The plot is arguably not very plausible in several places, and is certainly tedious in the second half of the film. The studio's taking control and editing the final cut – butchering it, it sounds like – is a travesty, that sort of thing always is, but even at 88 minutes, the film seems to drag on too long, and in what seems like a smug, theatrical way. I'm not convinced that if I was subjected to 60 more minutes, Welles' original cut, that I wouldn't have fallen asleep, based on the 88 that I did see. It was OK to see once, but I would never recommend it, or watch it again.
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