1942 – Agnes Moorhead
The Magnificent Ambersons
Most of what I know about Agnes Moorhead comes from the TV sitcom, Bewitched. But this was long before that show from the 60s and 70s. Here, in Orson Well’s second film, she was much younger, and was a more dramatic actress. She played a fascinating character who started out just as unlikeable and spoiled as the rest of the wealthy Amberson family, and as they declined into poverty, she began to lose her hold on her sanity, displaying a bit of madness near the end.
Moorhead actually surprised me with her performance. Her character, Fanny Amberson, the spinster aunt of the film’s lead, had an arch. As she became more humbled, she gained maturity and gravitas. And when she and her nephew, George, the last two remaining members of the family, found that they had less than a hundred dollars between them on which to survive for the rest of the year, she had a powerful sobbing breakdown. Incidentally, I read that Wells had her film that climactic scene ten times, telling her to play it a different way every time. On the eleventh take, she was told to just play the scene, and all the previous takes seemed to meld into what we got on the screen: the image of a tortured and broken woman losing control of herself in the face of utter destitution. Moorhead really sold the scene and earned her Oscar nomination.
Throughout the movie, she played a mostly unlikeable character. She played the part perfectly, and with the exception of her sister Isabel, she excelled at being just as mean as the rest of her family, fighting, sniping, and hurling hurtful words and insults. But it was alright. I wasn’t supposed to like Aunt Fanny much, and Moorhead seemed to understand that. Still, there were a few scenes where she showed real affection for her nephew. In the midst of being an agony-aunt, she showed that she actually did care for him, cared about what happened to him.
And then there was her pining over the man who Isabel loved. Moorhead played it as just one more way in which poor Aunt Fanny was ignored and cast aside, unloved, unwanted. It was just another layer to her complicated character. Yes, Moorhead surprised me in this film; surprised me in a good way.