Product Details

• Actors: Joseph Cotten, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorhead
• Directors: ORson Welles
• Format: NTSC, Black & White, Full Screen
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: The Nostalgia Merchant (Media Home Entertainment, Inc.)
• Run Time: 88 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000MPMG3M
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #302,820 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

An arrogant, spoiled son of a wealthy and powerful dynasty gets his much-deserved due when changing times plunge his family into a tailspin of anonymous destitution. A masterful portrait of moral retribution set against the coming of a new age at the turn of the century. Based on the novel by Booth Tarkington. Written and Directed by Osrson Welles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Visual Feast, October 27, 2007

By 

Carole Mangold (Springfield, Virginia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (VHS Tape)

Such an out-of-the-ordinary, beautifully filmed movie. For me, seeing all the filmed "stuff" happenng in and "around" the movie was more captivating than the story. WONDERFUL use of light and shadow. Appealing things to see. Was fascinated and felt that I had experienced a visual feast when the movie was over.

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Welles' great films as a director, August 25, 2010

By 

Michael A Neulander "Political Philosophy" (VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (VHS Tape)

Orson Welles' 1942 Romance Drama "The Magnificent Ambersons" is one of Welles' great achievements as a director. He also wrote the screenplay, but did not act in it. His second feature film, it is based on the 1918 novel of the same title by Booth Tarkington who won the Pulitzer Prize for this book. Welles lost control of the editing of The Magnificent Ambersons to RKO, and the final version released to audiences differed significantly from his vision for the film. More than an hour of footage was cut by the studio, and a new, happier ending was shot and tacked on.
The film has always received positive reviews from critics. Even in its radically altered form, the 1942 film is often regarded as among the best American films ever made, a distinction it shares with Welles's first film, "Citizen Kane." It and "Citizen Kane" were his only films to be nominated for Best Picture.

Plot Summary:

The young, handsome, but somewhat wild Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotton, a life long friend of Welles from the Mercury Theater days) wants to marry Isabel Amberson (Delores Costello), daughter of a rich upper-class family, but she instead marries dull and steady Wilbur Minafer. Their only child, George (Tim Holt), grows up a spoiled brat. Years later, Eugene comes back, now a mature widower and a successful automobile maker. After Wilbur dies, Eugene again asks Isabel to marry him, and she is receptive. But George resents the attentions paid to his mother, and he and his whacko aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead a life long friend of Welles from the Mercury Theater days), manage to sabotage the romance. A series of disasters befall the Ambersons and George, and gets his come-uppance in the end.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not so magnificent, August 1, 2011

By 

Dr René Codoni (Kuala Lumpur) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (UK import, Region 2 PAL format) (DVD)

Coming out in dvd very late and in a bad copy does not help Orson Welles' reputation, and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) is simply a stuffy old movie, crowded with equally stuffy drapes, furniture and mansions. The story of the arrogant son, torturing his widowed mother and other family(ies) of a medium size American town a good hundred years ago lacks any grand design his Citizen Kane (1941) has been praised for. Today, The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Touch of Evil (1958) and The Trial (1962) are perhaps his best secondary films, and much of his other stuff - well, junk.