The splendor of the Amberson house

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Movie
German title The splendor of the Amberson house
Original title The Magnificent Ambersons
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1942
length 88 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Orson Welles ,
Fred Fleck (anonymous) ,
Robert Wise (anonymous)
script Orson Welles
production Orson Welles for
Mercury Productions
at RKO Pictures
music Bernard Herrmann
camera Stanley Cortez
cut Robert Wise
occupation
synchronization

The Magnificent Ambersons is an American film drama by Orson Welles from the year 1942 . The film was produced by RKO and is based on the 1918 novel The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington .

action

In Indianapolis in the late 19th century, the Ambersons are the richest and most respected family in town. The beautiful daughter Isabel Amberson rejects her young admirer Eugene Morgan after he appeared in her garden drunk - although Eugene and Isabel are actually in love. While Eugene is moving away, Isabel marries the capable businessman Wilbur Minafer, whom she does not love. She spoils her only child, George Minafer Amberson, who is then spoiled and terrorized the city with his outrageous behavior.

After twenty years of absence, the widowed Eugene Morgan, now a successful automobile manufacturer, returns to Indianapolis with his daughter Lucy. You are invited to a lavish celebration of the Amberson family, which the family patriarch Major Amberson is giving in honor of the visit of his grandson George, who is now an arrogant and successful college student. George is taken with the enchanting and charming Lucy, but stays away from her out of antipathy for her father. He observes suspiciously that his mother Isabel dances with Eugene for a large part of the evening and seems to be very taken with him. Soon after the festival, George's father Wilbur dies and his mother Isabel becomes a widow. Meanwhile, when Morgan's automobile company was flourishing, the industrialist built a castle in order to imitate the wealth of the Amberson family. Eugene and Isabel approach each other again.

At a dinner party, George tells the Morgans that he thinks automobiles are a useless waste of investment. The other family members are dismayed by his arrogant demeanor, but Eugene Morgan surprisingly agrees with George, knowing that automobiles will affect civilization for either better or for worse. Later that evening, George learns from his uncle Jack Amberson and his aunt Fanny that twenty years ago Eugene was his mother Isabel's great love. Fanny's claim that Isabel never stopped loving Morgan after she married George's father, Wilbur, and that this is the talk of the town, makes George white-hot. Morgan tries to propose to Isabel, but George prevents it on the steps of the Amberson estate. Isabel's love for her son triumphs over her love for Morgan; she agrees to George's demands, although she is aware that he is just trying everything to separate her from Morgan.

George takes his mother on a trip around the world, ostensibly to keep her out of the gossip about her love for Morgan, but actually to prevent Morgan from becoming his stepfather. Before they leave for Europe, George tries to find out how Lucy feels about him, but she covers up her pain over George's behavior with carelessness. After his mother Isabel becomes seriously ill, George returns with her to Indianapolis and watches over her as a doorkeeper. When Morgan tries to visit Isabel, who is lying on her deathbed, George refuses him entry into the house.

Shortly after Isabel's death, her broken father also dies. Since he leaves nothing to his relatives, the family has to see how they make ends meet financially. Lucy refuses a reconciliation with George and knits an analogy about an Indian who was pushed into the sea on a canoe because he was offensive and arrogant. In this hopeless situation, George gives up his job as a paralegal and works as a factory worker to get more money faster. He also looks after Aunt Fanny, who is now suffering from psychosis. The "old maid" Fanny herself was always in love with Eugene, but was always in the shadow of her sister, which she never got over. The film ends with George wandering the now dirty streets of Indianapolis, unable to believe how industrialization has changed his surroundings and destroyed his once carefree life.

George is seriously injured in a car accident and receives a visit from Morgan and his daughter at the hospital. You make up with him.

background

The glamor of the House of Amberson is based on the novel The Proud Ambersons by Booth Tarkington , for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1918 . Orson Welles, who was friends with the author and believed he recognized himself in the character of George, wrote the screenplay for the film in just nine days. As early as 1939 he had staged a radio play adaptation of the book with the Mercury Theater . When casting his second feature-length film, Welles, like in the previous work Citizen Kane , mainly relied on members of the Mercury Theater, including Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead and Erskine Sanford. Ray Collins was the only actor who had already worked on the radio play version. The film music was composed by Bernard Herrmann , the later director Robert Wise was responsible for the editing.

Filming began on October 28, 1941 and lasted until January 22, 1942. The Amberson Villa set was one of the most expensive and elaborate sets of its time. The winter scenes were filmed in a disused ice house . The total film cost was estimated at $ 850,000. Orson Welles made use of numerous techniques and stylistic devices that he had already used in Citizen Kane , including depth of field , unusual settings and dissolves, and long tracking shots. The Splendor of the House of Amberson was also one of the first films whose opening and closing credits are read aloud.

The original version of the film, which lasted 138 minutes, was shown for the first time as part of a test screening in Pomona . The audience reactions were mostly negative. George Schaefer, President of RKO Pictures , wrote in a message to Welles: "Never in all my experience in the industry have I taken so much punishment or suffered as I did at the Pomona preview". A 15-minute shorter version, which was shown a little later in Pasadena , received much better reviews, but RKO decided to cut the film massively and shoot a new final scene that should come closer to the end of the novel. The protagonists are reconciled again. With Welles already working on his next project in Brazil , Robert Wise took responsibility for making changes to Amberson's House and directed the re-shoots. Welles was in constant contact with the studio, but many of his telegrams and memos were ignored.

In the end, RKO cut the film by around 50 minutes. Bernard Hermann's film music has also been partially alienated and replaced by compositions by Roy Webb . For this reason Herrmann had his name removed from the opening credits. The cut-out film material was later completely destroyed in order to free up storage space. A copy of the rough cut, which Welles had sent to Brazil, has not been found to this day. Orson Welles commented on the cut version of his film as saying that it looked like "it was cut by a lawnmower".

The premiere took place on July 10, 1942. The movie poster was created by Norman Rockwell . The film was originally shown as a double feature with Leslie Goodwin's Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost . The film became a commercial failure, causing the studio to lose over $ 600,000. Welles' contract with RKO was then terminated. He himself later said: “They destroyed Ambersons and it destroyed me.” 20 years later, the director was considering making an epilogue to the film. However, this idea was never implemented. The film was first shown in West German cinemas in 1966.

In 2002, based on the original screenplay, a television film was created in which Madeleine Stowe , Bruce Greenwood and Jonathan Rhys Meyers played the leading roles.

synchronization

The German dubbed version was created in 1966 under the direction of Joachim Brinkmann at Elan Film Gierke in Munich.

role actor German Dubbing voice
Eugene Morgan Joseph Cotten Helmo Kindermann
George Amberson Minafer Tim Holt Reinhard Glemnitz
Aunt Fanny Amberson Agnes Moorehead Rosemarie Fendel
Uncle Jack Amberson Ray Collins Klaus W. Krause
Major Amberson Richard Bennett Erik Jelde
Butler Sam J. Louis Johnson Herbert Weicker
Narrator (voiceover) Orson Welles Claus Biederstaedt

criticism

  • Lexicon of international film : powerfully staged, excellent camera work, with excellent performance. Even subsequent interventions - Robert Wise was commissioned by the studio after the catastrophic first performances to rigorously shorten the original 138 minutes of the film and to graft it with a comparatively hopeful ending - could not rob the drama of its urgency.
  • Evangelical film observer : In his second film, Orson Welles paints the image of late capitalist American society with not quite as strong lines as in “Citizen Kane”. Using the example of the Amberson family and the self-made man Eugèn Morgan, he makes decay and rise clear from the distance of the interested viewer. When you compare it with the artistically arranged sequences of images by young filmmakers, you first notice how modern Welles was 25 years ago.
  • Leonard Maltin : Brilliant drama based on Booth Tarkington's novel about a family unwilling to move with the times in their lifestyle; Mother and son conflict over their lover. Welles' film based on "Citizen Kane" is just as exciting in its own right, although the film was taken from his hands (rating: four / four stars)

In 1972 and 1982, The Splendor of the House of Amberson was on the top ten list of the best films of all time, which is chosen every ten years by Sight & Sound magazine in a poll of numerous film critics.

Awards

Academy Awards 1943

New York Film Critics Circle Award 1942

National Film Preservation Board

literature

  • Robert L. Carringer: The Magnificent Ambersons - A Reconstruction. University of California Press 1993. ISBN 0-520-07857-8
  • VF Perkins: Magnificent Ambersons. BFI Publishing 2000. ISBN 0-85170-373-9

Web links and sources

Commons : The Magnificent Ambersons (1942 film)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://synchrondatenbank.de/movie.php?id=2584
  2. ↑ The Splendor of House Amberson. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ Critique No. 106/1967, p. 145
  4. ↑ Leonard Maltin's criticism of TCM