Plot Synopsis (continued)
In the large lobby of the front hall as a orchestra
plays a minuet in the background, George (with white gloves and a
carnation in his buttonhole) stands with his mother (dressed in a
gorgeous ball gown) in the reception line and greets everyone assuredly
(but falsely): "I remember you very well indeed." He is
quickly attracted to Lucy and instantly falls for her - carrying
on the tradition of an attraction between a Morgan and an Amberson.
George leaves the reception line and takes her arm-in-arm for a long
stroll through the richly-decorated mansion toward the upstairs dancing
hall in a long, gliding tracking shot (with deep focus perspective).
The marvelously fluid tracking shot follows them across the entrance
hall, up the oak stairs, past stained-glass windows, and down the
long corridor of the second story.
On their way as they gracefully glide through the mansion
elegantly enriched with Edwardian craftsmanship, George is unconscious
of her father's identity. With characteristic stupidity, he foolishly
insults Eugene, calling him "the queer looking guy" as
Ludy's father talks to one of Major Amberson's two grown-up children,
Hon. Uncle Jack Amberson, a Congressman. To impress Lucy, he tells
her: "The family always liked to have someone in Congress." George
is quickly offended by all the men who are friendly and greet Lucy,
rudely remarking: "How'd all these ducks get to know you so
quick?" He is slightly annoyed that his mother invited them:
George: I really don't see why my mother invited
them.
Lucy: Maybe she didn't want to offend their fathers and mothers.
George: I hardly think that my mother need worry about offending
anybody in this old town.
Lucy: It must be wonderful, Mr. Amberson, Mr. Minafer, I mean.
George: What must be wonderful?
Lucy: To be so important as that.
George: Oh, that isn't important...Anybody that really is anybody
ought to be able to go about as they like in their own town, I should
think.
George is again repulsed by the "freshness" of
her father - the "queer-looking duck" waving at them while
he is dancing with Aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead), Wilbur Minafer's
unmarried, shrill-voiced sister who moved in with the Ambersons following
Isabel's marriage. George immediately takes a dislike for Eugene
- unaware of who the gentleman is.
Lucy shows great maturity and sound judgment and refuses
to be drawn into George's criticism of her male acquaintances or
her father. She tells George that her father, a widower, is a successful
inventor "working on a new kind of horseless carriage." George
shows a bit of disapproving contempt for her father's interests: "Horseless
Carriage! Automobile!" As they sit and talk on the stairway,
Lucy expresses how she now understands "what it means to be
a real Amberson in this town." George has a disdainful feeling
about most females: "Most girls are usually pretty fresh. They
ought to go to a man's college for about a year. They'd get taught
a few things about freshness."
As Eugene walks forward and calls up to ask Lucy for
a dance (with Aunt Fanny on his arm), George is taken aback when
he learns that the flowers Lucy carries were given to her by the
same man - her father, the man he was derisively calling "a
queer looking duck." Simultaneously, Fanny moves out of the
frame as Isabel moves in and asks her son: "George dear, are
you enjoying the party?"
Around a gleaming punch bowl, the family members recall
family relationships, including Eugene's incident with the bass viol
that ultimately led to Wilbur's marriage to Isabel. The elderly Major
Amberson teases Isabel about her rejection of Eugene when he was
drunk: "Isabel, I remember the last drink Gene ever had." His
remark causes Isabel to blush. Fanny reacts with a cheerful deduction
as she compliments her brother Wilbur - and attempts to slyly remind
Eugene that Isabel is permanently married but that she is available: "The
important thing is that Wilbur did get her, and not only got her,
but kept her." With a loving look at his daughter as she passes
by from his left and crosses into the foreground, Eugene refers to
another important result of his loss of Isabel:
There's another important thing, that is, for me.
In fact, it's the only thing that makes me forgive that bass viol
for getting in my way...Lucy.
In a scene that begins with the older generation dancing,
and ends with the children of their separate marriages dancing, Eugene
stands with Uncle Jack in front of a fireplace (with mantel and mirror)
before he takes Isabel for a dance. They wistfully refer to "old
times" (when he used to court her) and the hopeful, optimistic
dawn of "new times" for further romance:
Jack: Eighteen years have passed, but have they?...By
gosh, old times certainly are starting all over again.
Eugene: Old times. Not a bit. There aren't any old times. When times
are gone, they're not old, they're dead. There aren't any
times but new times.
To the accompaniment of an upbeat, ragtime-style rhythm,
the camera moves backward in a long, unedited, continuous take as
they exuberantly dance forward toward the camera - until it
picks up the younger couple of Lucy and George who enter from the
left.
Before the young pair themselves dance backward and
fade away into a group of other dancers behind them on the dance
floor, Lucy questions George about what he studies in school and
what he wants to become in life, but he condemns the lives of businessmen
- expecting to never enter a profession but live on his family's
fortune:
Lucy: What are you studying at school?
George: College.
Lucy: College.
George: Oh, lots of useless guff.
Lucy: Why don't you study some useful guff?
George: What do you mean, useful?
Lucy: Something you'd use later in your business or profession.
George: I don't intend to go into any business or profession.
Lucy: No?
George: No.
Lucy: Why not?
George: Well, just look at them. That's a fine career for a man,
isn't it? Lawyers, bankers, politicians. What do they ever get out
of life, I'd like to know. What do they know about real things? What
do they ever get?
Lucy: What do you want to be?
George (fatuously): A yachtsman! (Lucy reacts with astonishment)
When the ball is near its end, the older lovers Eugene
and Isabel are still gracefully gliding together on the darkened,
deserted dance floor, waltzing to a plaintive violin tune amid the
shadows. Running down from an upper stairs landing, the youthful
pair of George and Lucy sit in a lighted space at the foot of the
staircase closeby and watch their parents. [It is a symbolic representation
of the two generations, one reclaiming its love, the other looking
into the future for love.] George tells Lucy that he finds the automobile
repulsive and Eugene's line of work worthless:
Horseless Carriages! Automobiles!...People aren't
gonna spend their lives lying on their backs in the road letting
grease drip in their faces. No, I think your father better forget
about 'em.
During the leavetaking, Eugene and Isabel say a hushed,
simple goodnight to each other, amid many other overlapping voices: "Goodnight
Isabel. Goodnight Eugene." After exerting his forceful will
over Lucy during the goodbyes, George invites Lucy for an afternoon
sleigh ride the next day. Profiles are silhouetted against a window
thickly framed in ice and frost.
As Lucy and her father depart in their open-air horseless
carriage, she cheerfully asks above the noisy clattering of the automobile
engine: "Do you think George is terribly arrogant and domineering?" Eugene
replies: "Oh, he's still only a boy. Plenty of fine stuff in
him. Can't help but be. He's Isabel Amberson's son." Lucy smiles
back, realizing how much her father once loved Isabel: "You
liked her pretty well once, I guess, Papa." He admits that she
is right: "Yep. Do still."
Meanwhile, in a conversation around the great upstairs
landing of the darkened Amberson's staircase, one that forebodes
family rivalry, Isabel expresses her worry to George about Wilbur's
health and his bad investments: "It seems to me he looks so
badly...He's been worried about some investments he made last year.
I think the worry's affected his health." George is very forthright: "What
investments? He isn't going into Morgan's automobile concern, is
he?," determined that Amberson financing not be used for Eugene's
horseless carriage venture.
Wilbur appears in the doorway of his bedroom in a dressing
gown, looking harried, overworked, and worried. The spinsterish Fanny,
who has always been infatuated with Eugene, appears in the background
of the corridor with Jack. She defends Eugene's business affairs,
arguing that he is not out to woo Amberson money:
George: Look here, father, about this man Morgan
and his old sewing machine. Don't they want to get grandfather
to put some money into it? Isn't that what he's up to?
Fanny: You little silly! What on earth are you talking about? Eugene
Morgan's perfectly able to finance his own inventions these days.
George: I'll bet he borrows money from Uncle Jack.
Isabel: Georgie. Why do you say such a thing?
George: He just strikes me as that sort of a man. Isn't he father?
Wilbur: He was a fairly wild fellow twenty years ago. He's like you
in one thing, Georgie. He spent too much money. Only he didn't have
any mother to get money out of her grandfather for it. But I believe
he's done fairly well of late years, and I doubt if he needs anybody
else's money to back his horseless carriage.
George: Oh, what's he brought the old thing here for, then?
Wilbur: I'm sure I don't know. You'll want to ask him.
On the way to Fanny's room in a shadowy tense scene
[a grotesque shadow of a peacock is behind Fanny's profile], George
is convinced that the Ambersons are treating Eugene too cordially.
He mercilessly teases Fanny about her interest and fondness for the
widower Eugene. Her retaliatory mocking of George is ineffective
- she betrays some self-pity and jealousy of Eugene's love for Isabel:
Fanny: Eugene Morgan isn't in your father's thoughts
at all one way or the other. Why should he be?...
Uncle Jack: Are you two at it again?
George: What makes you and everybody so excited over this man Morgan?
Uncle Jack: This man Morgan.
Fanny: Excited!
Uncle Jack: Oh, shut up.
Fanny (in an hysterical, off-pitch outburst): Can't...can't people
be glad to see an old friend without silly children like you having
to make a to-do about it? I've just been suggesting to your mother
that she might give a little dinner for him.
George: For who?
Fanny (correcting): For whom, Georgie.
George (mocking her): For whom, Georgie.
Fanny: For Mr. Morgan and his daughter.
George: Oh look here. Don't do that. Mother mustn't do that.
Fanny (repeating the phrase to mock him): Mother mustn't do that.
George: Wouldn't look well.
Fanny (repeating the phrase to mock him, and then turning nervously
hysterical): Wouldn't look...See here Georgie Minafer! I suggest
that you just march straight on into your room. Sometimes you say
things that show you have a pretty mean little mind.
George: What upsets you this much?
Uncle Jack: Shut up!
Fanny: I know what you mean. You're trying to insinuate that I get
your mother to invite Eugene Morgan here on my account...
Uncle Jack (protesting off camera): I'm gonna move to a hotel.
Fanny: ...because he's a widower.
George: What?
Fanny: What?
George: Ha, ha, ha. (Fanny cackles back in mock laughter at him)
I'm trying to insinuate that you're setting your cap for him and
getting mother to help you?
Fanny: OH! (Fanny slams her door on him)
George: Is that what you mean?
In the next, joyous, much-celebrated, memorable winter
scene in the film, George and Lucy are seen whirling along in a horse-drawn
sleigh, luminously reflected in a frozen pool of water. Their gay,
sparkling ride is accompanied by the tinkling of bells incorporated
into the soundtrack. The juxtaposition of two time periods is beautifully
contrasted: the silent, graceful movement of the horse and sleigh
speeds past Eugene's new but stalled motor carriage (with passengers
Isabel, Fanny, and Uncle Jack - Wilbur is conspicuously absent),
[an authentic 1905 Model Sears] decorated with a tasseled canopy.
It has become bogged down in the snow and Eugene struggles to crank
the sputtering Morgan Motor and set it free. Suddenly, George and
Lucy pass the horseless carriage, and George calls out:
Get a horse! Get a horse!
George is humiliated when their sleigh overturns and
tips over, and the sled spills the couple over and down a mound into
a drift of snow. But they are unhurt and steal a kiss from each other.
Eugene is relieved that Lucy isn't injured: "The snow bank's
a featherbed." George is obsessively fussed over by his mother
as she continues to brush snow off him, although he appears embarrassed
by her attention in front of the others: "Don't make a fuss,
mother...Please mother, please. I'm all right."
They are led back to the horseless carriage through
the bare branches of the wooded area for the rest of their trip.
Their horse Pendennis gallops away. Eugene compliments Isabel: "You're
the same Isabel I used to know - you're a divinely ridiculous woman," although
Isabel thinks the two words are exact opposites:
Isabel: Divinely ridiculous just counterbalance each
other, don't they? Plus one and minus one equal nothing. So you
mean I'm nothing in particular?
Eugene: No, that doesn't seem to be precisely what I meant.
When the 'Morgan Invincible' stalls again, Eugene asks
George to "push" and he must breathe in smelly exhaust
fumes from the detestable horseless carriage. Tormented by Eugene's
regard for Isabel, Fanny shrewdly tries to talk above the noise of
the engine to Lucy in order to get Eugene's attention and impress
him with her comments - it is "so like old times" in the
past to have a second opportunity to catch Eugene:
Your father wanted to prove that his horseless carriage
would run even in the snow. It really does too...It's so interesting.
He says he's going to have wheels all made of rubber and blown
up with air. I should think they'd explode...Eugene seems very
confident. Oh, it seems so like old times to hear him talk.
Everyone happily sings: "The Man Who Broke the
Bank at Monte Carlo" - a song about money as an entertaining
plaything - as the camera focuses on the beautiful faces of the singing
occupants (even Fanny) in close-up. At the end of the entire sequence,
as the car with merry singers moves up to the horizon in the lower
right hand side of the frame, the camera slowly irises-out on the
car [a tribute to older silent films], turning the screen black.
In the next scene, one with considerable narrative
economy and restraint, Eugene's shadow falls onto the frosted panels
on the outside of the wooden oak doors of the Amberson mansion as
sinister musical chords play on the soundtrack. A black, circular
funeral wreath, in contrast to the circular halo of the dark iris
that closed the previous scene, conveys the fact that a death has
occurred: a major turning point in the film. After ring the bell,
mourners (Eugene and Lucy) are let into the house by the black butler
- an entrance mirroring their earlier entrance into the ball scene.
In ominous fashion, Eugene's shadow enters the doorway before his
own body - it will be the final time that he will ever enter the
Amberson doorway. Wilbur Minafer's body, never identified explicitly,
is laid out in the Amberson library. With the camera shooting from
the vantage point of the interior of the coffin, somber, respectfully-silent
family members pass by during the reception in a fluid take, paying
their last respects. [The coffin is never shown.]
Fanny observes as Eugene takes Isabel's arm and they
go out of the frame. The scene ends on a particularly striking but
ambiguous close-up of Aunt Fanny's anguished face with tears streaking
down. She is the one family member most affected by the death - of
her brother. Her tears may also reflect her worry or fury about the
possibility of a future romance between widower Eugene and widowed
Isabel. Later, townspeople discuss the death of Wilbur Minafer: "Wilbur
Minafer. A quiet man. The town will hardly know he's gone." [The
decline of the Ambersons' fortune begins with the death of Wilbur
Minafer.]
At the start of the next scene, a lightning bolt strikes
as rain sweeps across the Amberson mansion at nighttime. [It is wrong
to assume that this is the day of Wilbur's funeral. In fact, because
of the harsh editing, a considerable amount of time has passed and
it leaves the viewer confused. George has just graduated from college
and received his diploma at commencement.] In the huge Amberson kitchen,
the camera never moves as Fanny brings a large piece of fresh strawberry
shortcake to her nephew George, and then reinforces Isabel's maternally
protective attitude toward him: "It's the first of the season," she
describes it. "Hope it's big enough...Sweet enough?...Don't
eat so fast, George." With a napkin tucked into his collar,
George eats gluttonously.
Uncle Jack enters the kitchen behind them as George
makes passing, teasing comments about Fanny's infatuation for Eugene
Morgan. They both torment Fanny unmercilessly, telling her that Eugene
is dressing up specially to impress her. Sensitive to their criticism,
Aunt Fanny becomes increasingly agitated and distressed, cries, rises
from the table, and slams the door as she leaves the kitchen:
George: Well it struck me that Mr. Morgan was looking
pretty absent-minded most of the time. And he certainly is dressing
better than he used to.
Uncle Jack: Oh, he isn't dressing better, he's dressing up. Fanny,
you ought to be a little encouraging when a prized bachelor begins
to show by his haberdashery what he wants you to think about him.
George: Well, Jack tells me the fact he's been doing quite well.
Uncle Jack: Quite well.
George: Listen Aunt Fanny. I shouldn't be a bit surprised to have
him request an interview and declare that his intentions are honorable.
(Fanny begins to break down and runs from the room)
[In the process of re-editing, virtually all of the
material that deals specifically and directly with the causes and
nature of the economic decline of the Ambersons was eliminated.]
George tries to explain away Aunt Fanny's deep hurt by complaining
about her inability to be teased - and he grieves about the loss
of another victim for his own entertainment:
It's getting so that you can't joke with her about
anything anymore. With all the gambling, we found out that father's
estate was all washed up and he didn't leave anything. I thought
she'd feel better when he turned over his insurance to her.
With greater concern for his sister, Uncle Jack regrets
his cruelty:
I think we've been teasing her about the wrong things.
Fanny hasn't got much in her life. You know George, just being
an Aunt isn't really the great career it sometimes seemed to be.
Really don't know of anything much Fanny has got, except her feeling
about Eugene.
As Uncle Jack speaks, George abstractedly walks toward
the window. [Here, a key scene was cut from the original version
of the film. George is startled and surprised by what he sees outside
the window - the immense grounds surrounding the Amberson mansion
are being dug up to build houses. There are concrete blocks and bricks
all around - Major Amberson has had to sell off parcels of land around
the house in order to raise money for the estate. This property is,
in turn, subdivided and sold by the new owners. As the city spreads
to the suburbs, the new houses become run-down and dirty.] |