Synopsis
The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.
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Cast
- Joseph CottenEugene Morgan
- Dolores CostelloIsabel Amberson Minafer
- Anne BaxterLucy Morgan
- Tim HoltGeorge Minafer
- Agnes MooreheadFanny Minafer
- Ray CollinsJack Amberson
- Erskine SanfordRoger Bronson
- Richard BennettMajor Amberson
- Orson WellesNarrator (voice)
- Edwin AugustCitizen (uncredited)
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Reader
For the most part, this is a very close adaptation of Booth Tarkington's underrated novel about the relentless decline of a wealthy midwestern family through the rise of industrialization, though Welles makes the story even more powerful through his extraordinary mise en scene and some of the finest acting to be found in American movies. - 100
Chicago Reader
A masterpiece in every way. - 100
Los Angeles Times
An elegiac saga of the decline and fall of a rich small-town American family, based on a Booth Tarkington novel. - 100
Time Out
With immaculate period reconstruction, and virtuoso acting shot in long, elegant takes, it remains the director's most moving film, despite the artificiality of the sentimental tacked-on ending. - 100
The A.V. Club
The Magnificent Ambersons is still masterly. It’s the movie that all other films about families in decline are measured against. - 90
The New Yorker
The film wasn’t completed in the form that Welles originally intended, and there are pictorial effects that seem scaled for a much fuller work, but even in this truncated form it’s amazing and memorable. - 88
LarsenOnFilm
The bold cinematic techniques Welles employed in Citizen Kane are put to even more sophisticated use here. - 80
The New York Times
All in all, The Magnificent Ambersons is an exceptionally well-made film, dealing with a subject scarcely worth the attention which has been lavished upon it.
