(2001) When originally produced, Orson Welles's 1942 epic film (follow-up to Citizen Kane) was emasculated by RKO Pictures (released at 88 minutes) from its - luxurious extravagance, in the eyes of the studio - robust length and breadth. Nearly 60 years later the cable channel A&E hired director Alfonso Arau, with the aid of Welles's original shooting script, to recreate the master's vision - adding color and an hour's worth of performance - for the screen. While it's far from being bad, it's not magnificent.

Based on Booth Tarkington's novel, this period drama of atonement takes place, for the most part, in the early twentieth century of Indianapolis. Impulsive, arrogant, domineering, George Minafer (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), as his mother's only child, has been spoiled, becoming "too much Amberson." His father Wilber married Isabelle Amberson (Madeleine Stowe), the daughter of the town's wealthiest resident, Major George Amberson (James Cromwell).

The film opens on a party at the Amberson mansion where 20-year-old George meets the lovely Lucy Morgan (Gretchen Mol), daughter of Eugene Morgan (Bruce Greenwood), a widower and inventor of horseless carriages, who formerly courted (destroying a double bass attempting a serenade) George's mother. There's a marvelous scene of Eugene and Isabelle dancing outside under umbrellas in the snow.

From the party, time retreats twenty years to 1884: Eugene's improvident courtship, Isabelle's wedding with Wilber, and George's birth from the fetus's point of view, followed by brief glimpses of George's childhood, getting his own way, until back to winter of 1904.

Anyone George thinks of as beneath him, which includes most people, he dismisses as "riffraff." The following year, while George is away at college, Wilber worries himself to death over bad investments; the scene fades from a view inside the crypt.

In the summer of 1906, youth, good looks, and college graduation seem to offer smooth triumphal faces unlimited opportunities, but Lucy refuses George's marriage proposals because he has no ambition to have a career or profession. Meanwhile, her father has begun a successful automobile factory. At a dinner party, George intentionally insults Eugene by saying: "automobiles are a useless nuisance."

In an effort not to appear offended, Eugene at first defends his machine by saying it will "alter peace and war," but also concedes that automobiles very well may change not only the external landscape (eventually affecting the values of properties) but also the internal layout of people's spiritual space, possibly for the worse; nonetheless, the reality is, they're here to stay, and adapt we must.

When Aunt Fanny Amberson (Jennifer Tilly) relays to George that there's talk about town of Isabelle's affection for Eugene, George immediately reacts, calling such slander a scandal against his mother. Uncle George Amberson (William Hootkins), a man without talent for profit at investing but a prophet of calamity, warns his nephew: "Gossip is never fatal until it's denied." Unheedingly, believing he's saving his mother from infamy, George proceeds to do everything in his power to prevent his mother from ever seeing Eugene again with disastrous results.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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