The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

The Magnificent Ambersons was made in 1942 but looking at its ironic approach one could have placed it in 2001 and imagined Wes Anderson as its director. But no, this is an Orson Welles film, a quite good one as well. What its about? Well - modernization? Family melodrama? Love story? I don't know, and maybe that's half of the charm.  George is the son of a wealthy family. At a party at his family's house, he sets his eyes on Lucy, whose dad is a zaney car inventor. Cars? That's crazy; what could beat a horse and a wagon? "Automobiles are a useless nuisance, which had no business being invented", George tells Lucy's daddy, who now has become a prosperous man. George's dad has died, and it turns out his mother has or had a thing for Lucy's father. Suddenly we are thrown into big-time Oedipal drama as the car inventor makes advances. Lucy seems to have a thing for her dad as well. Towards the end of the film, we have a strange series of events and a moral conversion which I as a viewer had a hard time taking seriously. I was much more interested in Lucy's father's car industry than George's redemption. One reason why The Magnificent Ambersons felt like a confused affair was that a significent part of the story was cut out when Welles himself was out of the country. He complained that the story had been edited by a lawnmower. - - But as this is a film by Orson Welles (except for the sentimental ending which was  made without his consent) there are lots of eerie camera angels and deep-angle weirdness that make the movie pleasurable to watch.