A Very Orson Welles Christmas: The Magnificent Ambersons (Dir Orson Welles, 1h22m, 1942)

Few directors divide opinion like Orson Welles. To many, he will always be the enfant terriblé, arriving on screen with Citizen Kane, a film never to be matched its power, longevity, and influence, with Welles never truly escaping his debut's legacy. His later projects, to many, remain either unmade or heroic failures, the boy prodigy reduced to hawking Jim Bean, Paul Masson champagne, Vivitar cameras and a hundred other fripperies, and to voice overs for frozen peas, documentaries about the Titanic and Bugs Bunny, and bit-parts in, among other features, the The Muppets Movie (1979), and the terrible, and unofficial Casino Royale (1967). Orson Welles is of, course, far more than this, and over the next four weeks, we'll spend the festive season understanding the man, the actor, and director, behind the myth of Welles. Welcome, thus, to A Very Orson Welles Christmas 

1941. Welles has just completed Citizen Kane. Its release, and critical success will be not matched by financial success. Due to the influence of William Randolph Hurst, a heavy basis for the fictional Kane, and one far too close to the truth, the film will recieve a limited release, dooming it to reduced financial returns. We are not here to traverse the mountain that is Kane-I recommend the seminal Pauline Kael text, Raising Kane for a book-length consideration of a film in terms I can but admire. We are here to consider what lies in its shadow. Welles, after all, never stood still, and even whilst waiting for Kane, he would return to the theatre, producing Native Sun on Broadway. Hollywood, though, was waiting. His next film would adapt familiar work to Welles; The Magnificent Ambersons, written by Booth Tarkington, published in 1918 and winning a Pulitzer in 1919, had already been adapted by Welles in 1939 for radio.

Depicting the former glory, and declining fortunes of the Ambersons, a monied Midwestern family, with the advent of the motorcar in the United States, Ambersons focuses on the younger two generations of the household, that of Isabel Anderson (Dolores Costello, a former silent star who had struggled to adapt to the "talkies"), and her spoiled, domineering, and ultimately unfortunate son, George (Tim Holt, otherwise largely famous for appearing in a number of 1940s and early 1950s Westerns). Beginning with the courtship of Isabel, Welles' gift for storytelling (Welles himself narrates and wrote the film's script) is on full display; together with cinematographer, Stanley Cortez, and set designer, Mark-Lee Kirk, Welles depicts the halcyon days of the late 19th century, depicting the fashion, the social strata and events, and people of this bygone age swept aside by the motorcar.

Rejecting the advances of Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotton, already having featured in Kane and later to appear in Journey into Fear (1943), Welles' next film), Isabel promptly marries, and into the film steps George. Welles depicts him as a spoiled brat, the attic Chorus of locals, representing the townsfolk, hoping that he meets with misfortune. Like Kane, Welles' passing of time is elastic, the film leaping ahead to George's adult years, and here, two forces encroach upon the Ambersons' idyll. The first is Eugene, newly widowed, and it is here that the technical innovations behind the set by Kirk, (later reused in Cat People (1942) and The Falcon in Danger (1943)), allowing the camera, in a refinement of Kane's camera pits and false ceilings, to traverse through the entire mansion, are put to work.

Here, the camera moves, in one continous shot, through a party for George's return from college where Eugene, Isabel and George reunite, the son dismissive of his mother's former flame, deriding him from his position of privilege, and regarding him as a social climber. Yet, George also finds himself falling for Eugene's daughter, Lucy, a relationship that will, like that with Eugene, ebb and flow. Lucy will eventually be caught up in the complexities of George's vehement rejection of Eugene and the older man's-reciprocated-love for Isabel, after the death of her husband. Against this, Welles places that quintessentially American concept of Progress, represented by the automobiles that Eugene invests in; it is these that George rages against, dismissing their abilities-at one point barking at Eugene to "get a horse"as the motorcar becomes stuck in a snowdrift-but, as the years roll by, so this sense of progress begins to leave the Ambersons behind.

As the 20th Century continues, so the standing of the Amberson family continues to decline; it is here where George becomes increasingly controlling, Holt imbuing the scion of the Ambersons with an increasingly domineering presence, dismissive of Eugene, refusing him further access to his mother, and eventually driving away Lucy; it is in this state of disintegration, in the elder Ambersons dying or being reduced to decrepitude, that Welles produces the best performances of the film, the desperation of George's aunt when reduced to pennilessness palpable, the slow collapse of the noble house giving way to despair at the industrialisation of his hometown, George forced to turn to increasingly dangerous jobs to make ends meet. All seems lost. It is here that Welles' film reaches what should have been a dark, and soul-searching sensibility, progress leaving a family in its wake, as they cannot-or will not adapt to its forward step. 

1942. The Magnificent Ambersons lies finished, only needing editing before release. A screening by RKO will lead to the film's tale taking a futher twist at the hands of the RKO board and editor Robert Wise. By this point, America has entered the Second World War, and Welles, sent to Brazil as part of the Good Neighbour policy, is making It's All True (unfinished). Moreover, Welles has left, as part of his contract, the final cut to RKO, and audiences, testing badly with the film, lead RKO to carry out arguably one of the greatest act of vandalism in cinematic history, Wise cutting more than 40 minutes from the film, and reshooting the ending, adding a sudden turn to optimism more in keeping with the national mood. Welles' hands are tied in Brazil, and the negatives for the cut sections of the film are, allegedly, destroyed later to make room in RKO's vaults.

Welles will later regard RKO's act of brutalism as having destroyed him, and regards it as being the reason much of the mid 1940s will see him act, or produce on radio or stage, rather than get to direct films. In protest, Bernard Hermann will demand his score goes uncredited. The film is in tatters. Yet, like all the best stories, a tantalising clue remains; rumours remain of a copy of the film, somewhere in Brazil, sent down to Welles whilst working on It's All True. Somewhere out there, as a team headed by documentary maker Joshua Grossmann hunt, the film that could have made Welles the director of two of the greatest films ever made, may still live. Only time will tell. For now, The Magnificent Ambersons is a tantalising glimpse of a film that could have rivalled Kane and changed Welles' fortunes.

Rating: Highly Recommended.

The Magnificent Ambersons is available via streaming on BBC iPlayer, and on DVD and BluRay from Criterion in the UK and via streaming on HBOMax, and on DVD from Criterion in the USA

Next week we continue a Very Orson Welles Christmas with Rita Hayworth and Welles' noir tale of false murders and mistaken identity in The Lady from Shanghai