Tim Holt as the spoiled and impetuous George Minafer.
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FOR ORSON WELLES, The Magnificent Ambersons is the original Difficult Second Album. His first film was admittedly hardly a walk in the park — aturbulent and protracted release, it was a box-office disappointment, and ended up almost empty-handed on Oscar night — but it was still Citizen Kane. You try following up Citizen Kane, see how easy it is. The pressure was truly on for his next act.
Still just 26 years old, Welles had to prove he was not simply a one-trick pony — that he could live up to the barbed “boy genius” label given to him in the Hollywood press, who mocked his East Coast intellectualism and the unprecedented creative freedom he enjoyed on Kane. Hungry and ambitious, Welles had similar designs for Ambersons as he had on his first film: here could be a vast, sprawling portrait of a wealthy dynasty that might reflect the image of America as he saw it, in all its vast splendour and ugliness. Here, too, was an opportunity to build on the technical and artistic innovations of Kane, to move the medium into exciting new places.
Yet, by the end, both the film and director were broken. The experience turned out to be a torrid example of the clash between art and commerce; the rumours surrounding the project sullied Welles’ reputation almost indefinitely; and the film itself is a fascinating artefact of what might have been — the holy grail of lost films, a mystery that endures to this day.