The Magnificent Ambersons (BFI Film Classics)

the long version

"At the age of twenty-five, with Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles was the author and star of The Greatest Movie Ever Made. Then he persuaded RKO to let him adapt a favourite book, The Magnificent Ambersons. Booth Tarkington's novel had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1917, and had kept its popularity as a slice of mid-Western Americana. Its tale of dynastic ruin and social change wrought by the rise of the automobile inspired Welles' fond reconstruction of a lost world of leisure and elegance, brought to atmospheric life by a company of his favourite actors, including Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead in their most famous roles." "V.F. Perkins explores Welles' genius in directing actors, his intricate weaving of his own narration in and around the drama, and his unsurpassed use of the long take to capture the finest nuance of expression and unspoken feeling."--BOOK JACKET.