Plot
George Minafer (Tim Holt), on break from college, returns to his home in Indianapolis. His mother Isabel (Dolores Costello) and Major Amberson (Richard Bennett), his grandfather, hold a reception in his honor. Among the guests are the widowed Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten), a prosperous automobile manufacturer who has just returned to town after a 20-year absence, and his daughter Lucy (Anne Baxter). George instantly takes to the beautiful and charming Lucy but takes as quick a dislike to Eugene.
George's father Wilbur (Donald Dillaway) dies. As Eugene's automobile plant prospers, the industrialist builds a mansion to rival the magnificence of that of Major Amberson (where his daughter and George also live). During a dinner party, George tells Eugene that he thinks "automobiles are a useless nuisance, which had no business being invented." The other family members are taken aback by his rudeness, but Eugene says that George may turn out to be right, since he knows that automobiles are going to drastically alter human civilization, for better or worse.
During the evening George learns from his uncle Jack (Ray Collins) and his aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead) that Isabel and Eugene were an item and is enraged when Fanny implies that Isabel always loved Eugene even during her life with Wilbur and that people in town are still gossiping about this.
Eugene courts Isabel and decides to ask her to marry him. Sensing the developing intensity of their relationship, George takes control and rebuffs a planned visit from Eugene at the door of the Amberson mansion. Isabel's love for her son overrides her love for Eugene, so she complies with George's demands, although she knows that he is trying to separate her from Eugene. George takes Isabel on a world tour, ostensibly to get away from the "scandalous" talk in the town of her love for Eugene before her Wilbur's death, but also to remove her from the possibility of a relationship with him. Before leaving for Europe, George tries learning what Lucy is feeling, but she feigns cheerful insouciance, concealing her pain.
George and Isabel travel and live in Europe for a while. After she becomes ill, they return to the US, where George acts as gatekeeper for the dying Isabel. Eugene comes to the house to visit, but George refuses to let him see Isabel, who is on her deathbed.
Shortly after Isabel's death, the Major Amberson, who is grief-stricken, dies, leaving nothing of his estate to his descendants, and George and the other family members must fend for themselves financially. Lucy does not reconcile with George. She tells Eugene a story about a North American chieftain who was "pushed out on a canoe into the sea" when he became too obnoxious and overbearing (used as an analogy for George).
As the entire family's fortune has been depleted, George decides to give up his job at a law firm and go to work in a factory which pays more. He helps care for Fanny, who has descended into psychosis. The film ends with George wandering around a polluted city, confused and disoriented by the industrial society that has developed around him.
Additional ending scenes (without Welles's consent) show George getting injured in an automobile accident, and Eugene reconciling with him at the hospital.
Read more about this topic: The Magnificent Ambersons (film)
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