Citizen Kane + The Magnificent Ambersons
Citizen Kane + The Magnificent Ambersons
When a reporter is assigned to decipher newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane's (Orson Welles) dying words, his investigation gradually reveals the fascinating portrait of a complex man who rose from obscurity to staggering heights. Though Kane's friend and colleague Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), and his mistress, Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), shed fragments of light on Kane's life, the reporter fears he may never penetrate the mystery of the elusive man's final word, "Rosebud."
100% Must See - Metacritc
Certified Fresh 99% - Rotten Tomatoes
"It's a visual feast, from the moody, horror-flick style opening which hovers over the gates of man-made mountain Xanadu, to the opera-house scene when we levitate hundreds of metres from Susan's awful stage debut to the workmen flinching in the rafters." - Total Film
"Sublime moments, of which the most extraordinary must still be Everett Sloane, playing Kane's former business manager Mr Bernstein, remembering the girl in the white dress on the Jersey ferry: "I only saw her for one second and she didn't see me at all – but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl." I'll bet a week hasn't gone by when I haven't thought about that line and pictured the girl so clearly that she has become a false memory of the movie itself." - The Guardian
"It is the epitome of filmmaking, a masterpiece for which Welles, one of the greatest practitioners of the cinematic art, will be forever remembered." - TV Guide Magazine
"The sheer audacity and delight Welles takes in flouting conventions and inventing new ones is what keeps it fresh." - Empire
WINNER
Academy Awards, Best Original Screenplay - Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles
New York Film Critics Circle Awards, Best Film
National Board of Review Awards, Best Film
National Board of Review Awards, Best Acting - Orson Welles
National Board of Review Awards, Best Acting - George Coulouris
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The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Orson Welles' acclaimed drama follows two generations in a well-to-do Indianapolis family. Isabel Amberson receives a proposal from dashing Eugene (Joseph Cotten), but opts instead to marry boring Wilbur. Time passes, and Wilbur and Isabel's only son, George (Tim Holt), is loathed as a controlling figure in the town. When Wilbur dies, Eugene again proposes to Isabel, but George threatens the union. As George in turn courts the woman he wants to marry, a string of tragedies befalls the family.
WINNER
National Board of Review Awards - Best Actor, Tim Holt
National Board of Review Awards - Best Actress, Agnes Moorhead
New York Film Critics Circle Awards - Best Actress, Agnes Moorhead
Certified fresh 89% - Rotten Tomatoes
"Exquisitely beautiful film-making - there are frames in there to die for." - Times (UK)
"A major accomplishment" - Los Angeles Times
"After the neorealistic revolution of Citizen Kane's cinematographic achievement, then, The Magnificent Ambersons becomes the consecration, in some sort of stripped-down and ultimately classical way, of a new mode of screen narration." - L'Écran Français
Ranked at #25 in The Village Voice's 100 Greatest Films list
Selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".