The Magnificent Ambersons

This version of The Magnificent Ambersons certainly has a lot going for it with wonderful sets and cinematography. Color also gives I think a picture of Booth Tarkington's Indiana during the Theodore Roosevelt years. I agree with another reviewer that the celebrated version done by Orson Welles has a more Gothic look to it.

Whatever Orson Welles did had to have his personal imprimatur on it and this one does not have that individual stamp of anybody in terms of the performances of the players. The story does stick pretty well to the one Welles gave us 71 years ago.

Before The Magnificent Ambersons is anything else it's a Hoosier romance. Back when Indiana was in its frontier days the Ambersons were the local Cartwrights with a Ponderosa like estate. James Cromwell the current patriarch is like Ben Cartwright if you can imagine Lorne Greene aged and infirm.

But instead of useful sons, the family line has watered down to Jonathan Rhys-Davies an arrogant twit of a grandson who expects to live the life of leisure and deal with 'riff-raff' as little as possible. A job, a profession, heaven forbid.

Into the lives of the Ambersons comes Bruce Greenwood who has some history with Madeline Stowe, Rhys-Davies mother. So the young man develops an intense dislike for Greenwood who is a self made man who has invented his version of the horseless carriage and making good money at it.

As in the Welles version the story of the one way antagonism of Rhys-Davies to Greenwood is the story. This version does not have the stamp of an auteur like Orson Welles, but I think this one has its own merits.