Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

GazerRise Fantastic!

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

dabrahamson-97469 This was a brilliant movie! Orson Welles at his very best as a film maker. It is such a tragic shame that his director's cut (much longer) was lost and may never be found.

jc-osms I haven't read the Booth Tarkington novel on which Orson Welles' film is based but I mean to, if only to try to fill in some of the gaps that the 50 minutes of studio cuts made to the 90 minute running time. Welles once said something like, watch it for the first hour, that part he recognised, but after that, it wasn't his film. There are several Hollywood movies where the production suits upstairs have cut down the running length of a film, but I can't think of another where I'd so much want to see what was lost.It's just so obvious watching it that the story of this film had more to give and should have been allowed to play out like say "Citizen Kane" had. Welles, apart from narrating the piece, stays firmly behind the camera and if anything his direction is even better this time. So much originality and imagination right from the start as Joseph Cotten's ardent young Eugene almost falls out the frame in the opening minute, the long dolly shot as George walks Lucy around the Amberson mansion at the grand ball, the shadow of Eugene's head on a door to signify death within, the changing light on the dying Isabel's face as the curtains are drawn in her room, the upward tracking shot up two flights of stairs to gauge George and Aunt Fanny's reactions after George has sent Eugene away, itself so reminiscent of the famous reaction shot of the stage workers in "Kane" to Susan's disastrous operatic debut, all these and many more.Of course there are other recognisable Wellesian trademarks, like the monumental sets, overlapping dialogue, long takes and extreme close-ups not to mention his entirely novel way with title sequences.Up until the part where you can see the scissors wielded, the story of mummy's boy George's unhealthily protective love for his mother and hers for him, for him justifying his extreme petulance and selfishness as an adult to the exclusion of her future happiness and indeed his own, makes for engrossing viewing. His actions sabotage two budding romances, one of which his own, with the only thing I couldn't fathom in all of the characters' various motivations being Lucy's continuing love for such a shallow, venal character.The film is thus set up for its tragic final acts but then the hacking really begins with George suddenly penniless, Uncle Frank leaves town, Fanny has squandered her life savings on an out-of-nowhere speculative investment and George quits his budding law career for a more dangerous, highly paid occupation to allow Fanny to live out her days sedately in a nursing home rather than spiral down to the nervous breakdown she seems to always be on the verge of. Then somehow she's all recovered and smiling on the arm of by now automobile-tycoon Eugene's arm as he reconciles himself to an ailing George, ironically a car accident victim. It's as if the second half of the film has been accelerated to double-speed and in an unsubtle, unsympathetic way at that.Back to the good things, the acting is exemplary from Welles' Mercury players, as is the superb photography but with the missing footage now long lost, one can only wonder at what might have been. As it is, there's more than enough directorial genius on view to still justify watching it but as for that second half, talk about your cultural vandalism.

gavin6942 The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.More than 40 minutes of Welles's original footage was deleted, with portions reshot. Welles later said, "They destroyed 'Ambersons,' and 'it' destroyed me." Like the film itself, Bernard Herrmann's score for The Magnificent Ambersons was heavily edited by RKO. When more than half of his score was removed from the soundtrack, Herrmann bitterly severed his ties with the film and promised legal action if his name were not removed from the credits.In 1991, "The Magnificent Ambersons" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film was included in Sight and Sound's 1972 list of the top ten greatest films ever made, and again in the 1982 list. It's not that great.

evening1 Here is the story of a family that dazzles from the outside but is hurt and crippled in reality.Isabel, played by the elegant Dolores Costello (Drew Barrymore's grandmother), didn't appreciate the automotive inventor Eugene (Joseph Cotton) in their youth, and both went on to marry other people.Isabel raised her only child, George (Tim Holt), to be a spoiled brat who believed he was above work. Once both Isabel and Eugene are widowed, George does everything he can to thwart his now-wiser mother from having a second chance at love.And, ninny that she is, she lets the priggish twit get away with it!Eugene is about to stand up to the little nudnick when Isabel is on her deathbed but he turns tail at the last minute and passes up the opportunity.Something psychological was going on here but the movie doesn't show much interest in it. Agnes Moorehead is interesting as the spinster Fanny but her character is wishy-washy as well, producing lots of sturm und drang that peters out to nothing in the end.I'll have to read my fellow reviewers' work to try to understand why this film is so well-respected.I'd say the best thing about it was the sleighs!