A Film Canon

 

 

To an even greater extent than Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons pursues an aesthetic of disorientation, replacing the realism of Booth Tarkington's epic novel with something closer to cubism - a prism, or kaleidoscope, in which all places and times encompassed by the narrative are omnipresent ("Eighteen years have passed, but have they?"); or, rather, an attempt to visualise both life and money as "loose quicksilver in a nest of cracks." Admittedly, this is partly due to the severe cuts made to Welles' original version. However, there is also a more radical abstraction of light and shade than occurs in Citizen Kane, to the extent that the Amberson mansion frequently appears as little more than an epitome of Eugene Morgan's (Joseph Cotten) reflection that "at 21, or 22, so many things appear solid and permanent... which 40 sees as nothing but disappearing miasma." Even more radically, virtually every piece of dialogue is spoken at cross-purposes, or over the top of another piece, ultimately begging the question of whether it deserves to be called dialogue at all, rather than a generalised, ambient murmur, that is only just contained by Welles' steady, caressing narration. The result is a fulfilment, rather than a mere adaptation, of Booth's prediction that automobiles, or "horseless carriages", have "come, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring", their disembodied, disorienting movement extending to the entire sonic universe, such that young George Minafer's (Tim Holt) conservatism finds primary expression as the urge to contain and quantify gossip: "Where is this talk? Where does it come from? Who does it?"