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The Magnificent Ambersons

  • Director: Orson Welles
  • Year: 1942
  • Run-time: 1 hr 28 min
- I'm not as taken by this one as many other critics, it seems. There's no doubt that it contains flashes of the brilliance of Citizen Kane, and the acting in many scenes is sublime. But the pacing is all over the place - almost certainly a consequence of the great swatch of material that was removed by the studio and will probably never be recovered - with rapid dialogue often overriding our ability to identify the characters' motivations and intent. There was potential for this to be a powerful tragedy, but it doesn't build to the level it needs to - again, because the studio replaced the ending. I'd love to know what Welles intended the film to look like, but we likely never will, and what's left just isn't quite compelling in my opinion. 

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