Popular reviews

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  Review by Rick Burin ★★★★★ 36

  *SOME SPOILERS. ALSO, IF YOU AREN'T INTERESTED IN ORSON WELLES, YOU WILL FIND THIS BORING. EVEN IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ORSON WELLES, YOU MAY FIND THIS BORING*

  "Something had happened. A thing which years ago had been the eagerest hope of many, many good citizens of the town. And now it came at last: George Amberson Minafer had got his comeuppance. He got it three times filled and running over. But those who had so longed for it were not there to see it, they never knew it. Those who were still living had forgotten all about it and all about him."

  But when George Orson Welles, the infuriating, profligate wunderkind of American cinema got his comeuppance - three…

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  Review by Michael Strenski ★★★½ 2

  "I wrote the script and directed it. My name is Orson Welles. This is a Mercury Production."

  --the most heartbreaking line in the film.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 2

  93/100

  "Rosebud" in motion. Within its artificial snowflakes are the rampaging feelings of jealousy and the crumbling foundations of success, and in that sense, it's the film that is inseparably Orson Welles. The Magnificent Ambersons is flawed in a truly fascinating way, and while Welles' original cut could've been, as he claimed, better than Citizen Kane, we will never know. And yet, the tattered vision of The Magnificent Ambersons glows with unrestrained darkness and distinct beauty.

  Above all, It proves that the soul of true art can be lessened, but never removed. Family is everything, even if demons roam the shadows.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★½ 2

  84/100

  Third viewing, last seen 1996. Tried to pretend this time that it's exactly the film Welles intended, rather than get sucked into a useless vortex of speculation. I failed miserably. And I'm not even convinced that it's wrong to mentally compensate for known studio interference. No living soul* knows how the original ending played, for example, but I'm inclined to just ignore the blatantly terrible scene with which Wise replaced it—to treat the fadeout following the comeuppance narration ("Those who were still living had forgotten all about it, and all about him") as The End. Frankly, I don't understand why Welles didn't end the film there in the first place—it couldn't possibly be more perfect. Though I suppose that…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 3

  *Was a 93, now a 100*

  "George Amberson-Minafer walked home through the strange streets of what seemed to be a strange city. For the town was growing... changing... it was heaving up in the middle, incredibly; it was spreading incredibly. And as it heaved and spread, it befouled itself and darkened its skies. This was the last walk home he was ever to take up National Avenue, to Amberson Edition, and the big old house at the foot of Amberson Boulevard. Tomorrow they were to move out. Tomorrow everything would be gone."

  A nostalgia for the living. My favorite of Welles' films, which puts it right at the top of almost everything, really. Its cracks and fissures of space, structure (both familial and societal), and movement convey a deep-focus eruption of decay, one which observes like a ghost on its first day, curious and forever yearning.

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  Review by Matthew LeCHARLTON ★★★★★

  Remember to stop the film while George is repenting in the darkness. The final hospital scene should never be viewed.

  The Magnificent Amberson’s follows the fall of a great American family during the age of the automobile. Life speeds up as old money gets left behind. A town becomes a city as two lovers are destined never to be together.

  Orson Welles is one of my Gods and this film is among his miracles. It’s bleak and beautiful, capturing the capitulation of a wealthy family, something Visconti would make a career out of. 

  Despite the studio editing Welles cut and adding scenes their bastardisation fails to completely spoil the magic of proud nobility reduced to ashes.

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  Review by dmartsfilm ★★★

  This film came out one year after Citizen Kane and Welles believed himself that this would've been the better film if the studio didn't take the final cut away from him. Many people (the majority) believe this to still be a great movie. I found it a bit hard to fully get emerged into the story. There are peaks and valleys in this one for me, but I can definitely see the bones of a great work by Welles that we unfortunately will never see. His legend as a filmmaker is almost mythic in quality to me. I mean he made Kane when he was 25! Ambersons is still a technically impressive movie and it has flourishes of his brilliance…

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  Review by eely 🎄 ★★½ 9

  agnes moorehead scream-sobbing because she only has 28 dollars to her name is a little too relatable if you ask me

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★½

  I find there to be a mild bemusement when thinking of Orson Welles expecting mass audiences to empathize with George Amberson Minafer

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★★ 2

  Honestly, if only the original ending could have survived I think this would be untouchable even in its mangled, rushed-second-half form. The confluence of Welles' interests in radio, theatre and cinema makes this arguably more revealing of its maker's mindset than the touted (auto)biography of KANE.

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  Review by Stephen Gillespie ★★★★ 5

  First of all, have closing credits ever got any better than here? So classy, so democratic and such a joy.

  Welles’ follow-up to Kane is a holy object among cinephiles. This is because of its innately unfinished nature: an over two hour film cut down to a lean sub-ninety minutes by a studio, against the director’s will. The extra footage was allegedly destroyed, in a spiteful move to make sure Welles never got his cut, and the edits were justified by manipulative reasons that are well worth looking into.

  Is the longer version better? Probably. This is already pretty special but does feel constrained and diluted. The reality of the characters is established so well through script and performance but is…

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  Review by DNA cinephile🏳️‍🌈 ★★★★

  The Magnificent Ambersons. 1942. Directed by Orson Welles.

  Wes Anderson has stated on many occasions that The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) influenced his style in film making. In particular, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) was influenced by Orson Welles’s family saga. Orson Welles’s cinematography by Stanley Cortez and Jack MacKenzie was shot from below looking up for the first couple of acts. Then, as act two and three came along the cinematography angles were from above looking down as if to say no one looked up to the Ambersons and their legacy was gone. Bernard Herrmann’s score became more ominous as the story progressed as well. Congruent with the families demise, Wells also narrated and showed how the automobile and electricity changed…