(1942, b/w) After RKO Pictures cut an hour from the original 148 minutes of film behind the back of director/writer Orson Welles before releasing it to the theaters, Welles refused to accept any responsibility for or accolades from the picture, which introduced revolutionary techniques and received three Academy Award nominations.

Based on Booth Tarkington's novel - previously appearing in cinematic form in 1925 as Pampered Youth - and photographed by Stanley Cortez, Welles narrates the opening scene in Middleton: "The magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873. Their splendor lasted throughout all the years that saw their midland town spread and darken into a city. In that town, in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet.... In those days they had time for everything…. Against so home-spun a background, the magnificence of the Ambersons was as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral." A principal theme of change contrasts the fashions, attitudes, and pace of the past with the coming of the technological 20th century.

Stumbling over his bass fiddle while attempting to serenade Isabel Amberson (Dolores Costello), Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotton), a tinkerer with horseless carriages out of his league and losing face with the most prominent family in town, watches Wilbur Minafer marry the girl of his dreams.

Eighteen years later, George Amberson Minafer (Tim Holt), Isabel and Wilbur's spoiled only child, back from college, appropriates for himself the prettiest girl at a grand party in his honor in the Amberson mansion, Lucy (Anne Baxter), whom he soon discovers is the daughter of widower Eugene, all he has left. Arrogant and domineering, George boasts to Lucy of his having no intention of becoming a stuffy professional or businessman, rather a yachtsman out to see the world.

Since he was a curly-haired child running wildly through the streets, bullying one and all, the people of Middleton have been waiting for George to get his comeuppance. In the meantime, Eugene has prospered with his automobile business. (Examples of Eugene's vehicles from his earliest inventions, such as a motorized wagon before pneumatic tires, are fascinating in themselves.)

Following Wilbur's death, George and his old-maid aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead) discover that the estate was exhausted with debts and bad investments; as well Fanny will become impoverished because of a rash venture with a headlight company, leaving her with nothing more than her fond feelings for Eugene. Major Amberson (Robert Bennett) continues to provide for his daughter Isabel as well as for his grandson's education.

Responding with rudeness to Eugene, expressing his dislike for Lucy's father's ideas - "Automobiles are a useless nuisance…. They had no business to be invented" - George, having had his hopes for engagement rebuffed, astonishes Uncle Jack Amberson (Ray Collins) with this modern method of winning over a girl's affections. Eugene, though pained by the young man's aspersions, politely concedes: "They're going to alter war and they're going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles. And it may be that George is right. May be that in ten to twenty years from now that if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine but agree with George - that automobiles had no business to be invented."

When George learns that his mother has a romantic interest in Eugene, an affection dating back to her girlhood, he's outraged and comes between them. Eugene writes her a letter imploring Isabel to make a choice in his favor: "Don't strike my life down twice, dear." Instead she chooses to travel the world with George, though her health suffers.

Sublimating her disappointment, Lucy expresses satisfaction with spending her life with her father after "too much unpleasant excitement." When George and Isabel, much fatigued and frail, finally return to Middleton, so much has changed with the fortunes of the Ambersons in dissolution.

In 2001 the cable channel A&E hired director Alfonso Arau, with the aid of Welles's original shooting script, in an attempt to recreate the master's vision - adding color and an hour's worth of performance.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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