The Horse's Head

The Plot: In a Midwestern town around the turn of the century, the Ambersons are the wealthiest family with the most expensive mansion. In her youth, Isabel Amberson (Dolores Costello) was courted by Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten), but she rejected his advances and married Wilbur Minafer (Don Dillaway). Stuck in a loveless marriage, Isabel chose to spoil their son George (Tim Holt!), who grew up to be an arrogant mama’s boy. 20 years later, Eugene returns to town with his daughter Lucy (Anne Baxter), who George takes a liking to, unaware of their parents’ past. Eugene is now a successful automobile manufacturer, and George becomes increasingly agitated by Eugene’s attempts to rekindle things with Isabel. It’s a multi-generational family drama with meditations of how future technology corrupts past innocence, brought to nuanced life by the director of “Citizen Kane“, and completely botched by RKO’s subsequent tampering.

Why It Matters: The NFR write-up calls the film Welles’ “most personal and most impressive”, hailing the “stylish mastery” of the creative team and states that the ensemble includes “some of the best acting…to be found in American movies.”

But Does It Really?: Something had to follow “Citizen Kane”, which I guess makes “The Magnificent Ambersons” the greatest sophomore slump in movie history. Like “Kane”, “Ambersons” is a technically impressive movie that film students and historians love analyzing shot by shot. Unfortunately for Welles, you can only have one breakthrough, and “Ambersons” has enough shared DNA with “Kane” to make comparison unavoidable. Ultimately, I didn’t care for the film: too dense and complex for a first viewing, and not engaging enough to warrant a second. Each individual scene is well-crafted (and beautifully shot), but strung together they don’t make a cohesive movie. Obviously, the studio’s extensive retooling doesn’t help matters at all, which makes “Ambersons” infamously flawed; the ultimate “What If?” of American film. “Ambersons” earns its NFR standing on its reputation, but this one is reserved solely for film buffs enticed into exploring Welles’ filmography.

Shout Outs: An homage that made me laugh out loud; one of the film’s major events is announced on the front page of the Indianapolis Daily Inquirer, the fictional newspaper from “Citizen Kane”. There’s even a column by Jed Leland, Joseph Cotten’s “Kane” counterpart; no doubt a write-up on “dramatic crimiticism”.

Everybody Gets One: Dolores Costello was the best-known of the film’s stars at the time of release, with a film career that spanned over 30 years. Costello was primarily a silent film actor (dubbed “the Goddess of the Silent Screen”), and made the transition to sound film. “Ambersons” was one of her last movies before she retired from show business to focus on her family. Fun Fact: Dolores was married to John Barrymore, and is the grandmother of Drew Barrymore.

Seriously, Oscars?: Despite its troubled production and mixed reception, “Magnificent Ambersons” received four Oscar nominations. The film lost Picture, Supporting Actress, and Cinematography to that year’s juggernaut “Mrs. Miniver” (not to be confused with this movie’s Minifers), and lost Art Direction to another wartime drama: “This Above All”.

• As expected, Welles excels at economic storytelling, especially in these opening scenes, packing in a lot of character detail and world building in a few choice compositions. Perhaps he packs a little too much in; I don’t know if all this upfront exposition makes the film too top-heavy, or if a 1942 audience was just more literate than me and could follow all of this.
• There’s a lot of great dialogue in this movie, but my favorite is George explaining to Lucy his Uncle Jack’s political status: “The family always likes to have someone in Congress.”
• I was ready to once again tip my hat to “Kane” cinematographer Gregg Toland and his masterful work filming “Ambersons”, but it turns out he wasn’t this movie’s cinematographer! Toland was unavailable, so Welles selected Stanley Cortez, known for his efficient, economic style, on loan from Universal (while utilizing many of Toland’s assistant camera team). Welles allegedly found Cortez so difficult to communicate with he demoted Cortez to second-unit photographer, letting his assistant Harry Wild preside over the remainder of the shoot.
• Tim Holt is obviously the Orson Welles stand-in as George, a spoiled rich kid not-unlike Charles Foster Kane. He’s very good in this, with significantly more screen time than his other NFR entries, but he lacks the charisma and star power Welles used in “Kane” to successfully engage an audience with his unappealing character. Welles had played George in a “Campbell Playhouse” radio adaptation a few years earlier, and as good as Tim Holt is, you do wish that Welles had taken on the part himself. Coincidentally, Orson’s real first name was George; Orson was his middle name.

• Why does George pronounce it “autoMObile”? It’s weird, especially considering that everyone else in the movie says “AUTomobile”. And if he hates cars now, wait until he sees “Two-Lane Blacktop“. 

• So much of the attention in this film goes to the technical side that I don’t have a lot to say about this cast. Joseph Cotten and Dolores Costello are both good, but also just kinda there. And while Lucy is your standard ingénue part, it’s nice seeing Anne Baxter play something other than Eve Harrington. And she’s a lot better here than she is in “The Ten Commandments“, that’s for sure.
• So Orson loves big sprawling mansions and innocent scenes of playing in the snow. Got it. Perhaps Welles’ own Rosebud isn’t too far off from Kane’s.

• Longtime readers know I love me a one-take scene, and this movie has plenty of them. “Ambersons” uses a similar technique used later in “The Heiress“: plant the camera and let the characters move around. It prevents scenes from becoming stagnant while retaining the energy of a single take.
• Everybody loves Agnes Moorehead as George’s Aunt Fanny, and her character is certainly the most sympathetic of the bunch. Personally, I found her performance too theatrical, but then again most of Ms. Moorehead’s best performances were. Fanny’s famous water heater breakdown scene is especially scenery-chewing, but I’m willing to admit that I wasn’t too invested in the movie by the time that scene came along. Ah well, Moorehead did quite alright without hearing my dramatic crimiticisms. 

• I went into this viewing knowing of the film’s troubles, most notably the alternate “happy” ending. You can almost pinpoint the exact moment where Welles’ film ends and the studio sanctioned ending begins. It’s not a total 180 from the rest of the movie, but you can sense that things are different. Everyone becomes a little too conveniently optimistic as the film segues into an upbeat conclusion. Somewhat ironically, this new ending is closer to the novel’s ending than Welles’ adaptation.
• The end credits are unique in that in lieu of on-screen titles they are all narrated by Orson Welles with visuals matching each craft (a camera for cinematography, etc.) This is very similar to how Welles would narrate the credits at the end of his radio programs. Conspicuously absent is any credit for a film score: Bernard Herrmann requested his credit be removed after most of his score was trimmed by the studio. Also, I noticed the “all persons fictitious” disclaimer at the very end. This had been around in movies for a while at this point, but I suspect its prominent inclusion here is a conscious effort by RKO to avoid another Hearst-esque headache.

• The only good thing to come out of the “Ambersons” re-shoots is that it was the first directorial work for Robert Wise, who would shortly thereafter pivot to directing, with such classics as “West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music” in his future. Welles felt betrayed by Wise filming the re-shoots, and the two did not speak to each other for 40 years, only reconciling shortly before Welles’ death.

• As Orson Welles started to get a reappraisal from the film world in the 1950s, so did “Magnificent Ambersons”, with some scholars even declaring it better than “Citizen Kane”. Although he always resented what RKO did to “Ambersons”, Welles eventually came around to accepting the final film, even tearing up when watching it on TV. In the early 1960s, Welles attempted to film an epilogue with the surviving cast, but the project fell through.
• The deleted portions of “Magnificent Ambersons” have been declared the “holy grail” of lost film footage. All signs point to the scrapped footage being destroyed by RKO to free up space in their vaults, but rumors of a surviving rough cut in Brazil still persist. There have been multiple efforts over the decades to find the missing footage, and even a few attempts at recreating the lost footage using the film’s continuity script, but so far nothing has come up. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a #ReleaseTheWellesCut campaign, though I guess first there needs to be a #FindTheWellesCut campaign.
• The closest we’ve ever gotten to the original cut of this film is a 2002 TV movie using Orson Welles’ original screenplay. Directed by “Like Water for Chocolate” helmer Alfonso Arau, this “Ambersons” still manage to deviate from both of its source materials and was quickly forgotten.

• And finally: the only reference to “Magnificent Ambersons” in pop culture that I can think of off-hand is an episode of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” where Tom Servo convinces himself he’s watching “Ambersons” to get through the bad movie they’re riffing on. “I don’t even like ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’!” You and me both, Servo.

Further Viewing: This is not the first time “The Magnificent Ambersons” was adapted for film. 1925’s “Pampered Youth” was an earlier stab at a film version, and like Welles’ later incarnation, most of this film’s footage is lost. I’m beginning to think this book is cursed or something.

The Plot: Scott Nixon is an insurance salesman and amateur filmmaker hailing from Augusta, Georgia chronicling a specific element of his travels across America. Filmed over the course of 20 years, “The Augustas” is Nixon’s recording of over 30 towns across the country – all of them named Augusta. With quick peeks at various small towns and a wry sense of humor throughout, “The Augustas” goes beyond its gimmicky premise to become a window into an all-but-forgotten slice of American life.

Why It Matters: The NFR gives a rundown of Scott Nixon and the film, calling Nixon an “amateur auteur” that brings these cities “together under the umbrella of Americana.”

But Does It Really?: Man, the NFR loves their amatuer filmmakers. I enjoyed “The Augustas” as a fun, breezy travelogue; a vacation to both place and time. But what I found especially fascinating in my research were historians trying to find a deeper meaning to all of this; the subconscious connective threads Nixon is trying to show us by highlighting these Augustas. Here’s my hot take: Maybe the man just liked the name Augusta and was amused by how many other towns shared the name. I’m all for preserving someone’s art, but don’t overthink it, especially when it’s a hobby. I can give “The Augustas” a pass for NFR inclusion as a creative twist on the standard home movie, as well as recognition of someone spending their free time documenting a niche that makes them happy: something I can definitely relate to.

Everybody Gets One: As always, my thanks to the Center for Home Movies, especially an essay Heidi Rae Cooley which rounds up the little information that’s out there about Scott Nixon. As previously mentioned, Nixon was a traveling insurance salesman from Augusta, Georgia, and a member of the Amateur Cinema League (like fellow NFR artists Mary Marvin Breckinridge and Miriam Bennett). According to his son Cobbs Nixon, Scott was so fond of the name Augusta he wanted to name his daughter Augusta Georgia Nixon, but was talked out of it. Side note: Scott Nixon was of no relation to Richard Nixon, nor did he ever suspiciously delete any of his recordings to avoid criminal charges.

Title Track: During my viewing I began to wonder if all of these Augustas are named after the same person, but it turns out Augusta was a much more common name 300 years ago. Augusta, Georgia was named for Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the Princess of Wales who married Prince Frederick in 1736, the same year her Georigan namesake was established. Many of the other stateside Augustas are named after family members of their founders, typically their wife or daughter. Interestingly enough, Augusta, Illinois was named after Augusta, Georgia because co-founder Joel Catlin had a memorable trip there! Now we’re getting meta.

The Plot: It’s race day at a junior soapbox car derby in Venice, Los Angeles. A director and cameraman (Henry Lehrman and Frank D. Williams – the film’s actual director and cameraman) are there to capture all the excitement. Well…at least they would be if it weren’t for a little tramp (Charlie Chaplin) that keeps walking in front of the camera and hogging the attention. That’s about it plot-wise, as the Tramp does his comic schtick in front of an increasingly frustrated director as the cars race by in the background. But in these brief moments of silliness we are witnessing the first film ever released to star Chaplin’s famous Tramp character.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film a “milestone in film history” and quotes a contemporary review in The Cinema which called this new guy Chaplin “a born screen comedian”.

But Does It Really?: The only thing surprising about “Kid Auto Races” being added to the NFR is that it didn’t make the cut until 2020. This one is a no-brainer: It’s Chaplin’s debut as the Tramp, and while nowhere near as funny or iconic as Chaplin’s later fare, it’s still the first, and that’s good enough for NFR induction.

Everybody Gets One: Henry Lehrman started off as an actor at Biograph Studios, where he met another young actor named Mack Sennett. When Sennett left Biograph to form Keystone Studios, Lehrman jumped ship as well, and started directing as well as acting. As evident from “Kid Auto Races”, Lehrman had zero regard for actors or their safety, earning him the nickname “Mr. Suicide” in the industry.

Wow, That’s Dated: I was gonna say soap box derbies, but research has proven me wrong. Turns out soap box derbies are still a thing, with the official one that started in 1934 still going strong, only skipping 2020 due to COVID. I can only assume that modern soapbox racing is far safer than the one depicted in “Kid Auto”, and probably with less actual soapboxes.

Bonus Clip: The origins of the Tramp, and the filming of “Mabel’s Strange Predicament” were recreated for Richard Attenborough’s “Chaplin” with Robert Downey Jr.

I was able to track down the full movie at Kino Now.

The Plot: While many a preacher will simply tell you about fire and brimstone, the filmmaking couple of James and Eloyce Gist show you the wages of your sin with their film “Hell-bound Train”. Engineered by the Devil himself (Actor Unknown), this train speeds to its one-way destination with a separate car for every possible sin; from big ones like murder and infidelity to more questionable ones like jazz (both the listening of and dancing to). And the only way off this train is total devotion to the church with zero gray area or room for error. All aboard!

Why It Matters: The NFR calls this movie a “[s]urreal and mesmerizing allegorical film” and “an important and until recently overlooked milestone in Black cinema.”

But Does It Really?: Heavy-handed and preachy? Obviously. A natural for the NFR? Absolutely. “Hell-bound Train” has a lot going for it; a work by independent Black filmmakers, an amateur film brimming with creativity, and a time capsule of the religious scare tactics of the day (some of which are still in use). Even with the darker subject matter, you get the sense of a community coming together and having fun putting on a show. A yes for “Hell-bound Train” on the NFR, one of the more unique entries I’ve had the pleasure of covering for this blog.

Everybody Gets One: Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of information out there about James and Eloyce Gist due to most of their records being destroyed in a house fire. What we do know is that James Gist was a traveling evangelical preacher, while Eloyce was a writer and beauty culture entrepreneur native to D.C. Although they practiced different religions (James was Christian, Eloyce was of the Bahá’í Faith), they agreed on the main bullet points such as morality and spirituality. From what other researchers have surmised, James had already filmed and completed “Hell-bound Train” when he and Eloyce met, though Eloyce appears to be responsible for re-writes and re-shoots of later versions of the film. The Gists would travel the country screening “Hell-bound Train” at churches; Eloyce providing live musical accompaniment, and James delivering a sermon after the film. And of course, a collection plate was passed around.

Wow That’s Dated: This whole movie has that early 20^th century mentality where city living is an automatic sin.

You can watch the entire film for free on Kino Lorber’s YouTube channel.

The Plot: In the early 1980s, when Reagan-era politics reignited the nuclear arms race, we revisited the first era of Cold War paranoia with “The Atomic Cafe”. Clips from dozens of government propaganda films, newsreels, and TV interviews are spliced together in a “compilation vérité”: no narrator, no modern-day interviews for context, just archival footage illustrating how the invention of the nuclear bomb in 1945 quickly escalated into a full-on arms race, and how the US government used the surrounding fear to keep its citizens in line. The footage is edited to highlight the absurdities of the era, as well as the darkness of a government trying to normalize this new weapon of mass destruction.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film “a unique document of the 1940s-1960s era” and praises the “vast, yet entertaining, collage of clips”. An essay by the University of Kent’s John Wills contextualizes the film’s production.

But Does It Really?: Oh sure. I enjoyed this movie a lot, or at least as much as I can enjoy a movie about such a dark subject matter. “The Atomic Cafe” is on the list for its succinct representation of Cold War politics, and its unique presentation makes it more accessible than a lot of its contemporaries. Part documentary, part collage, part cautionary tale, “The Atomic Cafe” isn’t an essential American film, but is an alternatingly humorous and terrifying account of essential American history. On a list with its share of government propaganda, I’m glad the Registry found room for a post-modernist takedown like “The Atomic Cafe”.

Shout Outs: It wouldn’t be a film about atomic age propaganda without an appearance from our friend Burt the Turtle in “Duck and Cover“. The NFR write-up also mentions the use of “The House in the Middle“, though I wasn’t able to confirm its appearance here. And among the needle drops from old film scores is the theme from “The Killers” by Miklós Rózsa.

Everybody Gets One: While in San Francisco, Pierce Rafferty found a catalog of US Government films and was intrigued by their unique titles such as “You Can’t Get Away With It“. He convinced his brother Kevin – then a CalArts film student – to work on a film highlighting their fascination with government propaganda. Journalist Jayne Loader was brought on board, and helped narrow the focus of the movie on government films pertaining to the Cold War and atomic bomb. The trio sifted through an estimated 10,000 hours of footage and outtakes for their 86 minute movie. While most of these films were in the public domain, a majority of the movie’s $300,000 budget went to acquiring the rights to the remaining footage, as well as the soundtrack.

Title Track: The Atomic Cafe is the name of an actual cafe seen about 72 minutes into the movie, in the midst of a montage of all the random things that got nuclear names at the time.

Seriously, Oscars?: No Oscar nomination for “The Atomic Cafe”, though it was nominated at the BAFTA’s, and the Boston Society of Film Critics gave it their Best Documentary prize. The Oscar’s Best Documentary winner that year was “Just Another Missing Kid”, John Zaritsky’s film about the disappearance of a Canadian teenager in Nebraska in 1978.

• The filmmakers do an excellent job of showing the ripple effect of how the first atomic bomb led to the end of one war and beginning of another. And it all escalates so quickly, much like how I imagine it must have felt in real life. It’s saying something when your movie can only touch on the McCarthy hearings and the Rosenberg executions for only a few brief moments. But then again, if you’re looking for a streamlined documentary about the McCarthy hearings, the NFR has got you covered.
• It was very interesting watching this film so shortly after seeing “Oppenheimer” (a movie that I owe a second viewing that isn’t immediately followed by “Barbie”). In fact, “Oppenheimer” serves as an excellent primer to “Atomic Cafe”, which picks up more or less where the Nolan film left off. If nothing else, it made me appreciate the appearance in this film of Lewis Strauss, the Chair of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and future Robert Downey Jr. awards-bait. Strauss is on hand to downplay the nuclear fallout at Rongerik and Utirik, two islands downwind of the nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll in 1954. Strauss speech is intercut with footage of the Marshallese and their obvious signs of acute radiation syndrome.
• In addition to Strauss, this movie has a lot of notable politicians sprinkled throughout, including future presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan (’80s filmmakers loved their ironic Reagan footage). Also on hand is Senator Owen Brewster, remembered today as Alan Alda’s character in “The Aviator”, and Representative Lloyd Bentsen, who would go on to famously tell Dan Quayle “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
• For a movie hailed as being so funny, I actually found this an unsettling watch. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have the nostalgic lens of Boomers who grew up with this atomic culture, who can afford to look back on their childhoods as adults and laugh. Sure I learned about the Cold War in high school (kinda), but seeing actual footage of the frenzy that Americans whipped themselves up into is a distressing viewing experience. In some ways the film is even more relevant now than in 1982. I recognize so many of the same scare tactics in today’s cable news and clickbait headlines, applicable to any hot button issue a politician wants to scare their followers with. To paraphrase from this movie, it can happen here today, and it can be a lot worse.
• Wow, I did not realize how many songs there were about nuclear bombs. This movie’s soundtrack has such ’50s classics as “Atom Bomb Baby”, “Atomic Love”, and “Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb”. There’s so many of these that the movie had a soundtrack album! One song that has actually come up on this blog before is Bill Haley And His Comets’ “Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town)”, sung from the perspective of the lone male survivor of an atomic bomb. Unfortunate subject matter aside, you’re probably more familiar with that record’s B-side: “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock”.
• The final sequence in the film is an approximation of what a nuclear attack would have been like in the ’50s, with the nuclear family (another atomic namesake) heading into their fallout shelters and waiting out the bombing. The film ends with Father telling his kids to sweep up the glass and debris while they just relax and wait for the authorities to tell them what to do. I know it’s supposed to be funny, but I just found it all disturbing.

• The end credits play over more nuclear fallout footage with Floyd Tillman’s “This Cold War With You” on the soundtrack. Very much a lighter riff on the “Dr. Strangelove” ending (incidentally, “Atomic Cafe” was compared favorably to “Strangelove” in reviews). Check out the “Thanks” section of the credits for such varied names as Barbara Kopple, John Avildsen, E. L. Doctorow, and Abbie Hoffman.