Philip Amberson

A lost masterpiece from the turn of the century. Though it verges on melodrama, there is nothing cliché and the hero is redeemed from his own false pretenses. I burst into tears after the last line. Not because it was tragic, but that an unlikable character changed.

Major Amberson had "made a fortune" in 1873, when other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then.

(spoiler alert)

A little antiquated––stilted use of the English language––in the way it reads today. Its prose has not survived the rubs of time well in style; backward rather than forward looking in that regard. Still, the story line is engrossing. Since quite a bit of time passed between the last and middle chapters, Orson Welles wanted the actors to redo the last scene ten years later when they would have all aged naturally to play it. Way ahead of his time.

1910 to 1919 Transition to Modernism