Starting a new ritual with my Dad, I choose a TCM movie every week and we watch it together. I had heard of The Magnificent Ambersons, but had never seen it before last night.
I had high hopes going into the viewing, especially since the film garnered 4 Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress*, Best Cinematography, and Best Interior Set Design.
Keeping it positive first:
I LOVED the scene with the steam car getting stuck in the snow. Funny and bright, it actaully had me missing winter for half a second.
Certainly Freud would’ve loved the Electra and Oedipus angles in full force with both Tim Holt and his mother being co-dependent, as well as Joseph Cotton and his daughter Lucy.
I also loved the cautionary tale angle: were cars a boon or a hazard for people? Similar to what we thought about cell phones (they were THE worst for humans) and now AI.
Orson Welles directed this (along with two other men) and co-wrote this based on a novel along with his friend and actor, Joseph Cotton. It’s hard to believe this maudlin and slow paced piece was the follow-up to frenetic masterpiece, Citizen Kane.
Joseph Cotton acts in The Magnifcent Ambersons as the jilted lover who returns after his wife’s passing to rekindle the romance. He is good here, but seems lost without much to do. While he enjoyed many big roles (Citizen Kane being one) his greatest acting achievement was winning best actor at the Venice Film Fest for Portrait of Jennie.
I knew I recognized Tim Holt and sure enough, he was the drifter who takes up with Huston and Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Here he plays the pompous selfish trust fund man who foils Cotton’s character’s attempts to woo his mother, played by Dolores Costello in a bit of a hand wringing “I married the wrong man and now I can’t disappoint my son’ role. While Holt did a good job with the role provided, it’s hard to believe a son could be so selfish and hard hearted. Sadly in real life, Tim Holt died in his fifties of bone cancer.
The most lively role went to two ladies:
1. Agnes Moorehead*, who I loved like a second Mom in my sitcom fixated childhood for her role in Bewitched. In The Magnificent Ambersons, she is so young (!) and actually quite pretty, even though her character is supposed to be dowdy Aunt Fran. Her inner turmoil of loneliness vs. wanting the best for her sister-in-law is histrionic. But since she’s in a movie where the only theatrics are the spoiled Tim Holt, we welcome a woman’s lamentations.
2. Anne Baxter (Academy Award Winner for Razor’s Edge) who plays Lucy, the happy-go-lucky woman who puts Tim Holt in his place. I laughed out loud at her goodbye scene with the pompous ass Holt.
The movie held promise, but the pacing was too slow and I did not understand Agnes’s reaction in the ending scene. Not something I’d re-watch. Sorry Orson.
