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Film · RKO · 1942

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The Magnificent Ambersons

58Watch it awake.

A proud name loses the town to the car, and the studio replaced the ending.

The review

The studio took the film away, which you should know before you blame the finish. A proud family in a Midwestern town declines as the automobile rises, and as a man they scorned rises with it. Orson Welles. They recut the picture and replaced the ending. I am not inventing the ending that is gone. What remains is a household that confuses its name with a right to the town.

I have sat through that kind of family talk, the sort that thinks a name is a deed. The work that actually changes the street is the car. It was not a hit. You can still sit with what survived, if you remember the finish is not the one Welles made. The town moves. The name does not own it.

Journal

Keep The Magnificent Ambersons in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 58. Yours can differ.

The glance

Piety and Temperance are the thin ones.

Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

Ben-Hur

70 instead of 58

Ben-Hur is still a drama film, and it scores 70 instead of 58. What you gain is piety: The story turns when revenge is not the last word he is willing to live by.

The eight

7
Industry
The automobile is the new work, and the scorned man rises on it.
8
Household
A proud family treats its name as the life it is owed.
3
Piety
Nothing in their pride stops them from claiming the town.
5
Courage
The scorned man builds a life; the family will not risk change.
7
Republic
They act as if a family name were a right held over the town.
4
Temperance
Love of status runs until the decline is the only check left.
6
Truth
The fall is honest; the studio still swapped in another ending.
6
Stewardship
The people get the car; the old name does not come with it.

Where to watch

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Live Historic · The Magnificent Ambersons · 58IMDb

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Film · Columbia · 1959

Pass it on

Anatomy of a Murder

58Watch it awake.

Adults. The courtroom is the work. What happened and what can be proved are not the same fact.

The review

A soldier shoots a bar owner and says the man raped his wife. A former prosecutor who now fishes more than he practices takes the defense. I am not going to describe the testimony. In 1959 the testimony itself was the scandal, because a courtroom in an American film was asked to say out loud what a trial of this kind has to say. The lawyer is good at the saying. He is also having a good time, and the film lets you see the good time, which is the correction inside the craft.

Adults. A house does not need this as a primer. A house that wants one picture of how a verdict is made, rather than how a villain confesses, can use it. Ask, at the end, what the jury was allowed to know and what the rooms already knew. Those are different piles. The decade's more famous courtroom hours snap the case shut with a witness who breaks. This one is more honest about the gap, and less honest about whether the lawyer is a man to admire. Admire the proceeding. Decline the grin.

Journal

Keep Anatomy of a Murder in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 58. Yours can differ.

The glance

Household and Piety are the thin ones.

Is a marriage, a parent, or a child a real life here, or just a prop?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

12 Angry Men

75 instead of 58

12 Angry Men is still a drama film, and it scores 75 instead of 58. What you gain is stewardship: It hands you the duty to be inconvenient.