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IMDbPro

The Magnificent Ambersons

  • 19421942
  • Not RatedNot Rated
  • 1h 28m
IMDb RATING
7.6/10
25K
YOUR RATING
Anne Baxter, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Dolores Costello, and Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Theatrical Trailer
Play trailer2:05
1 Video
99+ Photos
  • Drama
  • Romance
The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.
IMDb RATING
7.6/10
25K
YOUR RATING
  • Directors
    • Orson Welles
    • Fred Fleck(additional sequences)
    • Robert Wise(additional sequences)
  • Writers
    • Booth Tarkington(from the novel by)
    • Orson Welles(script writer)
    • Joseph Cotten(additional scenes)
  • Stars
    • Tim Holt
    • Joseph Cotten
    • Dolores Costello
Top credits
  • Directors
    • Orson Welles
    • Fred Fleck(additional sequences)
    • Robert Wise(additional sequences)
  • Writers
    • Booth Tarkington(from the novel by)
    • Orson Welles(script writer)
    • Joseph Cotten(additional scenes)
  • Stars
    • Tim Holt
    • Joseph Cotten
    • Dolores Costello
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 142User reviews
    • 88Critic reviews
    • 93Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 4 Oscars
      • 4 wins & 4 nominations total

    Videos1

    The Magnificent Ambersons
    Trailer 2:05
    The Magnificent Ambersons

    Photos139

    Anne Baxter, Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, and Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Richard Bennett, Ray Collins, Dolores Costello, and Don Dillaway in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Dolores Costello and Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Anne Baxter and Joseph Cotten in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Dolores Costello and Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, and Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Anne Baxter, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Richard Bennett, Ray Collins, Dolores Costello, Don Dillaway, and Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Agnes Moorehead in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Ray Collins, Dolores Costello, and Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Joseph Cotten and Dolores Costello in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
    Joseph Cotten, Richard Bennett, and Ray Collins in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Tim Holt
    Tim Holt
    • George Minafer
    Joseph Cotten
    Joseph Cotten
    • Eugene Morgan
    Dolores Costello
    Dolores Costello
    • Isabel Amberson Minafer
    Anne Baxter
    Anne Baxter
    • Lucy Morgan
    Agnes Moorehead
    Agnes Moorehead
    • Fanny Minafer
    Ray Collins
    Ray Collins
    • Jack Amberson
    Erskine Sanford
    Erskine Sanford
    • Roger Bronson
    Richard Bennett
    Richard Bennett
    • Major Amberson
    Orson Welles
    Orson Welles
    • Narrator
    • (voice)
    Edwin August
    Edwin August
    • Citizen
    • (uncredited)
    Georgia Backus
    Georgia Backus
    • Matron
    • (uncredited)
    Harry A. Bailey
    • Citizen
    • (uncredited)
    Olive Ball
    • Mary - Maid
    • (uncredited)
    Jack Baxley
    • Reverend Smith
    • (uncredited)
    William Blees
    • Young Man at Accident
    • (uncredited)
    Lyle Clement
    • Citizen
    • (uncredited)
    Bobby Cooper
    • George Minafer as a Boy
    • (uncredited)
    Don Dillaway
    Don Dillaway
    • Wilbur Minafer
    • (uncredited)
    • Directors
      • Orson Welles
      • Fred Fleck(additional sequences) (uncredited)
      • Robert Wise(additional sequences) (uncredited)
    • Writers
      • Booth Tarkington(from the novel by)
      • Orson Welles(script writer)
      • Joseph Cotten(additional scenes) (uncredited)
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      RKO chopped 50 minutes of the film and added a happy ending while Orson Welles was out of the country. The footage was subsequently destroyed; the only record of the removed scenes is the cutting continuity transcript.
    • Goofs
      Towards the end of a long tracking shot with George and Lucy in a horse-drawn carriage, a portion of the rear end of a camera car and some sort of filmmaking equipment briefly enters the left side of frame.
    • Quotes

      Jack: My gosh, the old times are certainly starting all over again.

      Eugene: Old times, not a bit. There aren't any old times. When times are gone, they're not old, they're dead. There aren't any times but new times.

    • Crazy credits
      All of the credits except the RKO logo, the film's title and the copyright notice are recited orally (by Orson Welles) at the end of the film, not written out onscreen. As Welles recites the names of the production crew, we see such items as a motion picture camera when he says "Director of Photography" a pair of hands turning knobs as he says the words "Sound Recording By", etc.
    • Alternate versions
      From "Magnificent Obsession," a Vanity Fair article by David Kamp from April 2000: "On March 11, Robert Wise sent a 132-minute composite print (a print with picture and soundtrack synchronized) to Rio for Orson Welles to review. This is the version that scholars and Wellesophiles consider to be the 'real' Magnificent Ambersons. Curiously enough, the first blow against this version was dealt not by RKO but by Welles himself. Before he'd even received the composite print, he impulsively ordered Wise to cut 22 minutes from the middle of the film, mostly scenes concerning George Minafer's efforts to keep his mother and Eugene apart. Wise complied, and on March 17, 1942, The Magnificent Ambersons, in this form, had its first preview screening, in the Los Angeles suburb of Pomona. Sneak previews are a notoriously unreliable gauge of a film's worth and potential for success, and RKO did The Magnificent Ambersons a particular disservice by previewing it before an audience composed mostly of escapism-hungry teenagers, who had come to see the movie at the top of the bill, The Fleet's In, a feather-light wartime musical starring William Holden and Dorothy Lamour".
    • Connections
      Edited into Histoire(s) du cinéma: Une histoire seule (1989)
    • Soundtracks
      The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo
      (1892) (uncredited)

      Music and Lyrics by Fred Gilbert

      Sung a cappella by Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter,

      Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins

    User reviews142

    Review
    Top review
    "Loose Quicksilver In A Nest Of Cracks"
    In a Mid Western town at the turn of the century, an ostentatious family lives in an ostentatious house and arrogantly considers itself superior to all the other folks. Isabelle Amberson is the doyenne of the family, and is courted by Eugene Morgan, a bright young engineer. Isabelle rejects Eugene because of an imagined slight, and marries the worthy if unspectacular Wilbur Minafer. This sets in train a tragedy of unrequited love as Eugene continues over the years to yearn for Isabelle, while Isabelle's plain sister Fanny carries a secret flame for Eugene. Isabelle's imperious son George grows up and, thwarted in his own love for Lucy Morgan, develops an intense antipathy towards Eugene, the ever-present guest at the Ambersons' dinner table.

    Welles' affection for the Booth Tarkington novel which inspired this masterpiece is easy to understand. It is set in the snowbound countryside of the northern Mid West, the very place where Welles was born and raised, and the Ambersons are just the kind of upper middle class family from which Welles sprang. More than this, George Minafer IS Welles. Spoiled and deferred to as a child, George grows up knowing no bounds to his whimsy. The monster that he becomes is oddly attractive, partly because of his utter self-belief. Welles himself was such a man. He must surely have contemplated casting himself as George: Tim Holt, who actually appears in the role, resembles Welles uncannily, with his pudgy good looks and resonant baritone speaking voice. Welles had an inordinate fondness for strawberry shortcake, and so does George.

    The sombre, brooding atmosphere of the film is reinforced by its symbolic scheme. It is a film of departures and sunderings, with characters forever disappearing on long vacations, dying or merely vanishing behind closing doors, as when Fanny scurries away, devastated by the courtship joke.

    As with "Citizen Kane" in the previous year, the film's stylistic approach is to show groups of interlocutors as ensembles, without the camera moving in on the individual speaker. Some of the faces remain in shadow or are otherwise obscured. The viewer works out from the context whose words he is hearing. In "Kane", the device helped to show the many-faceted nature of a human life. Here, it underscores the centrality of the family. Each of the Ambersons is subordinate to the family itself, and the family is the continuum, the amber in which these characters are trapped. Another of the "Kane" themes is developed here - that wealth and status cannot protect anyone against unhappiness. Welles' fascination with mirror images, indulged here in the brief bathroom scene, was to emerge again in "The Lady From Shanghai".

    George Minafer and his "grand, gloomy and peculiar way" is at the heart of this film. He clashes unpleasantly with Eugene for two important reasons - George, the classic 'mommy's boy', sees Isabelle's lover as a rival, and Eugene is despicable because he is 'in trade' - and therefore far too vulgar a man to be lounging around the Amberson drawing-room. George's excuse for the confrontation is his ostensible desire to protect his mother from scandal, but this convinces nobody. In the climactic scene where George refuses Eugene admission to the house, we see George first through etched glass, emphasising his emotional aloofness, and his essentially defensive posture. Mrs. Johnson addresses George as "Mr. Amberson", then corrects herself and gives him his actual title, "Mr. Minafer". The error is significant, because George is the archetypal Amberson - sneering, haughty and strangely dissatisfied with life. In the scene where George and Lucy sever their connection, George protests indignantly that the emotional stress is going to make him faint. He doesn't collapse, but Lucy does. This is typical of George - he is quick to make his own selfish position clear, but does not in fact share the emotional vulnerability of the rest of humanity. His arrogance seals him off. Lucy's discourse on indian names throws up 'Ven Do Nah', the legendary hero whose name means 'Rides Down Everything'. It is, of course, a veiled allusion to George. Perhaps 'They Couldn't Help It' is a reference to the decline of the Ambersons.

    After the death of Wilbur, and a seemly period of mourning, Eugene tries again to court Isabelle. In this saga of lost love, Eugene's suffering is the most acute. When he writes to Isabelle after the rift with George, he pleads with her most touchingly not to "strike my life down twice". Eugene's forbearance and dignity are ever-present. Joseph Cotten plays him as a man who endures his misery with stoicism. His speech at the dinner table on the dubious benefits of the automobile is powerful, generous - and a classic Welles creation.

    It is Lucy's fate to repeat her father's tragedy, growing old in the absence of love. Ann Baxter is charming as Lucy, and the ageing process is convincingly depicted. Her forced levity in the scene where George breaks with her is very moving.

    Welles' record is unique: two years, two films, two masterpieces.
    helpful•17
    1
    • stryker-5
    • Apr 4, 1999

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • July 10, 1942 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Der Glanz des Hauses Amberson
    • Filming locations
      • Ice & Cold Storage Company - 400 S. Central Avenue, Los Angeles, California, USA
    • Production company
      • Mercury Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Budget
      • $850,000 (estimated)
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • Runtime
      1 hour 28 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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