THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS U

film extras 1942 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Featurettes, Video essays, Radio Plays, Booklet

How do you follow Citizen Kane? Orson Welles jumped straight into an ambitious adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s elegiac novel about a family ruined by the arrival of the automobile. It’s shot with typically exquisite élan, but its sombre tone appalled anxious studio execs, who junked 40 minutes of footage and added a happy ending. This packed Criterion disc contextualises what might have been, but the surviving cut is still astonishing for its thematic depth and technical punch. Simon Kinnear