The Magnificent Ambersons

Jun 17, 2010 from 14:00 to 15:00 UTC-04
Location: Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach
Latest Activity: Sep 23, 2020

This Thursday evening, June 17th at 6pm in the Rosenthal Lecture Room at the Preservation Foundation’s offices, the 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons will be presented. It is the second film in the Preservation Foundation’s summer film series on anxiety, change and progress. Each film offers a representation of a culture or group in flux. The event is FREE to all, though seating is limited. To make reservations please respond to this email or call 561.832.0731. The Foundation’s offices are located at 311 Peruvian Avenue in Palm Beach. Drinks, sodas, wine, and food snacks will be provided with the film. As well, the special Palm Beach Martinis, made famous during last year’s Film Nights, will return and be available for all. The Foundation’s Director of Public Affairs Alexander C. Ives will, as with the previous Film Nights present a short introductions to the film. Orson Welles’ rarely seen masterpiece – considered by many critics superior to Citizen Kane – tells the tale of a late 19th-century American town’s most prosperous family destroyed by the march of industrialization to turn the town into a city. Currently unavailable on DVD, The Magnificent Ambersons is based on Booth Tarkington’s famed Pulitzer-Prize winning novel. To see a clip of the film’s opening scenes, please click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg6emvCqvBE The Amberson family is the most prosperous and powerful in town at the turn of the century. Young George Amberson Minafer, the patriarch’s grandson, is spoiled terribly by mother Isabel. Growing up arrogant, sure of his own worth and position, and totally oblivious to the lives of others, George falls in love with Lucy Morgan, a young though sensible debutant. But there is a long history between George’s mother and Lucy’s father, of which George is unaware. As the town grows to a city, industry thrives, the Ambersons’ prestige and wealth wanes, and the Morgans – thanks to Lucy’s prescient father – grow prosperous. It has been called by one reviewer, “the immortal epic of the decline and fall of a powerful family too obsessed with the splendor of the past to grasp the significance of the future.” The two socio-economic groups of those who spend their lives ‘being things’ and those who spend their lives ‘doing things’ are contrasted throughout. But, as Orson Welles’ narrator warns of the film’s villain progress, “the faster we're carried, the less time we have to spare” and hence, the more community we lose. Alexander C. Ives Director of Public Affairs Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach 311 Peruvian Avenue Palm Beach, Florida 33480 561.832.0731, ext.112 aives@palmbeachpreservation.org

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The Magnificent Ambersons

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