4/4/23
Newsletter #297
The Crack of Dawn
As I mentioned recently, the best part about reviewing western movies for True West Magazine was that I only reviewed movies that I like. Every column brought me joy because I was sharing something that was worth sharing, and maybe somebody would even listen to me and see the film. Continuing with that idea, I’m going to try to add an occasional section called, “Waxing Rhapsodically,” about films that I love that don’t get enough attention, or have unfairly been forgotten.
Starting at the top of the list of misunderstood films is Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Due to the many post-production problems, then 45-minutes being cut out without Welles’ permission or supervision, and his subsequent dismissal of the film, the film itself has been dismissed. I contend that, like the statue of David with its missing arm, what remains is brilliant,
First of all, Booth Tarkington’s novel that won the second Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1919, is a really good book. In the first sequence of the film, Welles establishes the time period and the characters in an unusually visual, yet literary way. By condensing the hell out of the opening of the book, we are taken through the quickly changing fashions of the time: the shape of shoes and the length of coats, with one of our lead characters (Joseph Cotton) acting strictly as a model for the clothes, except now we’ve already met him and like him without him saying a word. Welles wistfully establishes the beauty and tradition of a long-lost time, but also the central plot of a childishly failed romance, leading to a loveless marriage, that produces the lead character, Georgie (Tim Holt). Georgie is such a snotty rich kid that the entire plot of the film is waiting for Georgie to get his “comeuppance.” And casting young Tim Holt, son of western star Jack Holt, in his first starring role. Honestly, Tim Holt was never better than that.
I think that there is a fearlessness in using Georgie as a lead character – a person we don’t admire or like – and having us wait for his eventual destruction. And because this is not a revenge story, when Georgie finally does get his comeuppance – “Three times filled, and running over” – there is no one there to see it. There’s no joy in Georgie’s comeuppance.
Agnes Moorehead as Aunt Fanny gives a performance that really is the beginning of Method Acting in movies, and a decade before Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando. She has an absolutely brilliant scene where she’s explaining how she’s saved money by walking and not taking the streetcar, then completely freaks out and falls to the floor against a boiler. Georgie is horrified and says, “Aunt Fanny, you’ve got your back against the boiler.” Aunt Fanny shrieks, “It’s not hot! It’s cold!” Truly, there had never been a performance in a film as raw as that.
There’s a scene, which is only one shot, of old Major Amberson sitting by the fire musing seriously about the meaning of life, “It’s the sun. The Earth came out of the sun, and we came out of the Earth . . .” Out of frame we hear the uncle (Ray Collins) and Georgie discussing the major’s will, who owns the house, where has all the money gone – crucial plot information – and we don’t see any of it. We stay on the old major ruminating, then we hear a church bell and we know he’s dead. We don’t have to see the funeral (which they show way too often in movies). One sound effect relived Welles of shooting an expensive scene.
And another thing, I don’t think anybody had ever shown such utter disdain for the American Dream, Capitalism, or anything else we Americans previously held sacred, until then. At the big Amberson ball, which contains so many beautifully composed shots that I personally find it both awe-inspiring and daunting, Georgie condemns everybody. “Look at them: doctors, lawyers, doing jobs, wasting their lives. What’s the point?” I can’t do the venomous dialogue justice, but it ends with the astoundingly young, beautiful, incredibly talented Ann Baxter asking in amused disdain, “And what are you going to do?” They are dancing at that point and he replies, “Why, be a yachtsman,” and they go waltzing off into the crowd.
One more, but I’m not even close to being done. Near the end, Ray Collins and Tim Holt are talking in a in a low two-shot – “Personally, I’ve thought there were many times when you ought to have been whipped, but I must say I’ve always liked you, Georgie” – and they’re in a train station because we can hear the people and clanging. When they’re finished speaking, Ray Collins walks away, the camera pans over and there’s an astoundingly huge train station set lit with brilliant beams of light that we only get to see as a pay-off. No other director would have shot that scene that way.
I believe that I have sufficiently waxed rhapsodically about The Magnificent Ambersons, although I could easily go on. Yes, it’s a flawed masterpiece, but why concentrate on the flaws? That which is good is so good.
I intend to see the Mediterranean Sea today. I’m going to do my damndest to have fun. Why not?