Reception
The film recorded a loss of $620,000.
The film has been very well received by critics. Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator, reports that 96% of the critics gave the film a positive review with only one negative. While not as acclaimed as Citizen Kane, it is considered one of Welles's best works. It and Citizen Kane were the only films of Welles to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
A dissenting view came from Manny Farber, reviewing the film in August 1942. While crediting Welles for his drive toward three-dimensional characters and his desire for realism, Farber wrote:
- "The movie runs from burdensome through heavy and dull to bad. It stutters and stumbles as Welles submerges Tarkington's story in a mess of radio and stage technique. The radio comes in those stretches of blank screen when the only thing present is Welles's off-screen voice mellifluously setting the period and coyly reminiscing, talking and drooling, while you sit there muttering let's get on. And at the times when something is on the screen and Welles tells you what for.
- Theatre-like is the inability to get the actors or story moving, which gives you a desire to push with your hands. There is really no living, moving or seeing to the movie; it is a series of static episodes connected by narration, as though someone sat you down and said "Here!" and gave you some postcards of the 1890's."
Read more about this topic: The Magnificent Ambersons (film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)