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The Magnificent Ambersons (film)

1942 film by Orson Welles

The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1942 film about the social decline, ruin and fall of the aristocratic Amberson family at the turn of the century with the coming of the industrial age and the rise of the automobile.

Written and directed by Orson Welles, based on novel by Booth Tarkington.
Real life screened more daringly than it's ever been before! taglines

Narrator

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  • The magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873. Their splendor lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city. In that town in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet and everybody knew everybody else's family horse and carriage. The only public conveyance was the streetcar. A lady could whistle to it from an upstairs window, and the car would halt at once, and wait for her, while she shut the window, put on her hat and coat, went downstairs, found an umbrella, told the "girl" what to have for dinner and came forth from the house. Too slow for us nowadays, because the faster we're carried, the less time we have to spare.
  • In those days, they had time for everything. Time for sleigh rides, and balls, and assemblies, and cotillions, and open house on New Year's, and all-day picnics in the woods, and even that prettiest of all vanished customs: the serenade. Of a summer night, young men would bring an orchestra under a pretty girl's window, and flute, harp, fiddle, cello, cornet, bass viol, would presently release their melodies to the dulcet stars. Against so home-spun a background, the magnificence of the Ambersons was as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral.
  • And now Major Amberson was engaged in the profoundest thinking of his life. And he realized that everything which had worried him or delighted him during this lifetime, all his buying and building and trading and banking, that it was all trifling and waste beside what concerned him now. For the Major knew now that he had to plan how to enter an unknown country where he was not even sure of being recognized as an Amberson.
  • 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'd got it three times filled and running over. But those who had longed for it were not there to see it. And they never knew it, those who were still living had forgotten all about it, and all about him.
  • 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. Tommorow they were to move out. Tomorrow everything would be gone.

Eugene

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  • I know what your son is to you and it frightens me. Let me explain a little. I don't think he'll change. At twenty-one or twenty-two, so many things appear solid and permanent and terrible. Which forty sees are nothing but disappearing miasma. Forty can't tell twenty about this. Twenty can find out only by getting to be forty.
  • [in a letter to Isabel] And so we come to this, dear. Will you live your life your way, or George's way? Dear, it breaks my heart for you, but what you have to oppose now is your own selfless and perfect motherhood. Are you strong enough, Isabel? Can you make a fight?
  • Fanny, I wish you could have seen Georgie's face when he saw Lucy. You know what he said to me when we went into that room? He said, "You must have known my mother wanted you to come here today, so that I could ask you to forgive me." We shook hands. I never noticed before how much like Isabel Georgie looks. You know something, Fanny? I wouldn't tell this to anybody but you. But it seemed to me as if someone else was in that room. And that through me, she brought her boy unto shelter again. And that I'd been true at last, to my true love.

Uncle Jack

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  • [to George] Ah, life and money both behave like loose quicksilver in a nest of cracks. When they're gone, you can't tell where, or what the devil you did with them... I've always been fond of you, Georgie. I can't say I've always liked ya. But we all spoiled you terribly when you were a boy... There have been times when I thought you ought to be hanged. And just for a last word, there may be somebody else in this town who's always felt about you like that. Fond of you, I mean, no matter how much it seems you ought to be hanged.
  • You can't ever tell what will happen at all, can you? Once I stood where we're standing now to say goodbye to a pretty girl. Only, it was in the old station, before this was built. We called it the depot. We knew we wouldn't see each other again for almost a year. I thought I couldn't live through it. She stood there crying. Don't even know where she lives now. If she is living.
  • Nobody has a good name in a bad mouth! Nobody has a good name in a silly mouth, either.

George

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  • Anybody that really is anybody ought to be able to do about as they like in their own town, I should think.
  • Most girls are usually pretty fresh. They ought to go to a man's college for about a year. They'd get taught a few things about freshness. Look here, who sent you those flowers you keep making such a fuss over?

Dialogue

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Uncle Jack: Eighteen years have passed, but have they?... By gosh, old times certainly are starting all over again.
Eugene: Old times. Not a bit. There aren't any old times. When times are gone, they're not old, they're dead. There aren't any times but new times.
Lucy: What are you studying at school?
George: College.
Lucy: College.
George: Oh, lots of useless guff.
Lucy: Why don't you study some useful guff?
George: What do you mean, useful?
Lucy: Something you'd use later in your business or profession.
George: I don't intend to go into any business or profession.
Lucy: No?
George: No.
Lucy: Why not?
George: Well, just look at them. That's a fine career for a man, isn't it? Lawyers, bankers, politicians. What do they ever get out of life, I'd like to know. What do they know about real things? What do they ever get?
Lucy: What do you want to be?
George: A yachtsman!
Maj. Amberson: So your devilish machines are going to ruin all your old friend, eh Gene? Do you really think they're going to change the face of the land?
Eugene: They're already doing it major and it can't be stopped. Automobiles...
[cut off by George]
George: Automobiles are a useless nuisance.
Maj. Amberson: What did you say George?
George: I said, "Automobiles are a useless nuisance." Never amount to anything but a nuisance. They had no business to be invented.
Uncle Jack: Of course, you forget Mr. Morgan makes them. Also did his share in inventing them. If you weren't so thoughtless, he might think you're rather offensive.
Eugene: I'm not sure George is wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward, they may be a step backward in civilization. It may be that they won't add to the beauty of the world or the life of men's souls. I'm not sure. But automobiles have come. And almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They're going to alter war and they're going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles. And it may be that George is right. It may be that in ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine but would have to agree with George: that automobiles had no business to be invented.
George: [disparagingly] Horseless carriages. Auto-mobiles. People aren't going to spend their lives lying on their backs on the road letting grease drip in their face. No, I think you're father better forget about 'em.
Lucy: Papa will be so grateful if he could get your advice.
George: I don't know that I've done anything to be insulted for.
Lucy: You know, I don't mind you being such a lofty person, at all. I think its ever so interesting. But, Papa's a great man.
Lucy: Don't you remember? We'd had a quarrel and we didn't speak to each other all the way home from a long, long drive. And since we couldn't play together like good children, of course, it was plain we oughtn't of play at all.
George: Play?
Lucy: What I mean is, we've come to the point where it was time to quit playing. Well, what we were playing.
George: That being love, as you mean, don't you?
Lucy: Something like that. It was absurd.

Taglines

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  • Real life screened more daringly than it's ever been before!
  • From the Man who Made "The Best Picture of 1941"
  • Orson Welles' Mercury Production of Booth Tarkington's Great Novel

Cast

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