Forever Amber

It's 1644 and Civil War grips England. Baby Amber is found at the doorstep of a puritan family in the countryside. She is the product of a scandal from opposing sides of the war. It's 1660. Oliver Cromwell is dead and the monarchy is restored. Amber (Linda Darnell) refuses an arranged marriage and longs for a high class life. She uses her sex to social climb her way to the top. She follows a group of Royalist led by Lord Bruce Carlton (Cornel Wilde) and his friend Lord Almsbury to London. Her journey would take her to the court of King Charles II. Bruce gets her privateering ship. She gets pregnant and sent to debtors' prison where she joins highwayman Black Jack Mallard. They escape prison and go on their crime spree. Jack is killed and she is rescued by Captain Rex Morgan who introduced her to acting in the theater. That's where she reconnects with Lord Almsbury who is now married with a child. She continues to social climb as she pines for her true love Bruce.

This is based on a period-piece romance novel. The name that caught my eye is director Otto Preminger. It's three years after his stylistic masterpiece Laura. It's the days of the powerful studio head and Zanuck had him under contract. He is given this prestige affair with a big budget. The material is rather scandalous at the time which Zanuck used with the expected censor opposition. It's nothing nowadays and this costume affair seems rather stiff. I don't know much about Linda Darnell. She seems to have a long and varied career with this as one of her highlights. She's beautiful and she's doing some broad acting. This is reminiscent of the style of Gone with The Wind except it is far inferior. It's rather pulpy where the sexual opportunism wears out its salacious welcome. It's compelling enough to watch but I don't find the ambitious Amber to be that appealing.

Just watched "Forever Amber" the other night on TCM and it was very riveting! I had seen this movie many many years before, and I do vividly recall the final scene when Amber from her window, was watching Carleton and son leaving for Virginia. The movie from the other night closed abruptly with Amber closing the window and the credits appeared. Something didn't seem right! I remember years ago, Amber getting some kind of invitation from the palace, and she immediately shifted her attention from Carleton and the boy to the royal invitation without another thought to her former lover. That scene defined Amber St.Clair in all its essence.

Overlong, overwrought romantic epic that lacks chemistry between the leads. Linda Darnell is passable as Amber -- if not stunningly talented, then at least gifted with screen presence. But Cornell Wilde is as flat as a wet blanket, dousing the fire out of every scene where it might possibly have ignited. Most errors in movies of this type can be overlooked if the attraction between the two lovers is palpable. Sadly, there is no indication that Wilde's Carlton even likes Amber, let alone finds her alluring. Production code aside, there were plenty of movies of this period that portrayed believable epic love, and this isn't one of them.

The real highlight here is George Sanders as the licentious Charles II, a part he was born to play. I have no doubt that Vincent Price, considered for the role, could have done well (he gave the best performance of his career in another Preminger movie, "Laura"), but Sanders brings so much dripping wit and irony to everything he does that he makes every scene he's in come alive. He's not in it much, however.

The production itself is pretty good, some great costumes and sets. The swordfighting scene (with thankfully little dialogue) was excellent and far too short. The story itself is a little choppy. The first scene was a non-sequitur, promising a potentially interesting plot device that never came. And the ending was a complete disaster - abrupt, unresolved, unbalanced, and worst of all, unsatisfying. Overall, the movie leaves a sour taste in the mouth, as if the decadence that was portrayed somehow got hold of the people making it and caused them to focus more on the image than on the story.

Somewhat saucy romp has a ravishingly beautiful and amber haired Linda Darnell in the lead full of piquant carnality, lavish costumes and settings and a scene stealing George Sanders as Charles II. What it doesn't have is a lively pace and that to some extent is its undoing. Preminger was the wrong director for a piece of entertainment like this that required a florid touch, Michael Curtiz would have been much more at home at the helm.

The novel this is based on was a notorious but tremendously successful sensation of its day. That book while certainly not "A Great American Novel" is a highly enjoyable piece of pulp fiction full of sex, murder and double crosses in fancy clothes with a complex, very entertaining heroine at its center who has a good heart but is not overly burdened with morals. Unfortunately since they tried to film it in the forties when the Production Code was in full force the more salacious plot points had to be excised. What made it to the screen has its moments but shows the heavy hand of censors most evident in the abrupt ending but scattered throughout the movie. Still a fun romp with Linda giving a spirited performance and for those who haven't read the book a somewhat racy tone.

A troubled production from the beginning what with censorship problems, a recast leading lady, Linda Darnell stepped in after production had started when Peggy Cummings didn't work out and Lana Turner couldn't be borrowed from MGM and a martinet in the director's chair.

There are still a few amusing stories connected to the backstage upheaval that went on. Linda Darnell had worked with Preminger before on Fallen Angel and it had been rough going but she truly came to loathe him during production of Amber. Later while filming A Letter to Three Wives Joseph Mankiewicz needed her to throw a look of disgust at a picture unseen by the audience, to achieve that look he slipped a picture of Preminger into the frame without her knowledge, he got his look.

A small sampling of Preminger's directorial style: after acting out a scene for Linda and Cornel Wilde he screamed at them as they tried to do as he had instructed "Don't do it like I did it! Do it like I meant it!"

One peripheral story: when Ava Gardner was briefly married to Artie Shaw he flew into a rage and berated her when he caught her reading Forever Amber saying it was trash and she should be focusing her attention on things that would enrich her mind, he was that kind of husband. They divorced shortly after and within the year he had married Kathleen Winsor...the author of Forever Amber!

If Forever Amber were being made today the results would have been quite different. Without The Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency inspecting all the product that came from Hollywood, Amber St. Clair's sexual escapades during Restoration Great Britain would have been a far better film. Still it's not bad as it is.

Another reviewer compared it to Gone With the Wind. You can look at that in two ways, the interaction between Linda Darnell and Cornel Wilde and compare it to Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. Lots of similarities there. But also the book itself was a blockbuster best seller in the Forties as Gone With the Wind was in the previous decade and brought in a built-in audience.

Kathleen Winsor when she wrote the novel was married to her first husband a football player who was a history student. For his honor's thesis he was writing about the Stuart Restoration. From his research material, Winsor became fascinated with the period and created her novel.

20th Century Fox and Otto Preminger got the rights and did a fine job in recreating the United Kingdom of the 1660s. Linda Darnell got one of her best roles in her career as Amber, a high spirited and vivacious girl like Scarlett O'Hara, who finds true love, but sacrifices it for ambition.

In class conscious times as those were there were few venues for people to rise, even less if you were a woman. Darnell rises from Newgate Prison to the court of Charles II where she becomes one of Charles's numerous mistresses. Along the way she uses many men, like highwayman John Russell, army captain Glenn Langan, nobleman Richard Haydn and even her own true love nobleman Cornel Wilde with whom she has a son out of wedlock.

Presiding over it all is a world weary and cynical George Sanders who plays Charles II. Sanders would play The Merry Monarch in another and vastly inferior film called The King's Thief. He does capture the jaded cynicism of Charles II so very well, it's one of his top five career parts.

If the title role in the film were about the male lead Bruce Carlton, I'm sure Darryl Zanuck would have cast Tyrone Power in the part as he appeared in several films opposite Linda Darnell. Instead Cornel Wilde steps in and he's a most dashing Restoration nobleman and seeker of fortune in the New World.

The most spellbinding performance and so against type is that of Richard Haydn as the elderly rake, Lord Radcliff. He's a widower who's looking for a 17th century trophy wife and finds one in Linda who at the point in time he first meets her is an actress. He's a coldblooded person of mystery and menace and really registers it well on the screen. He marries Linda and she inherits his title when he dies.

Haydn is killed in a thrilling scene involving the great fire of London which occurred in 1666. It's the highlight of the film and I can't say any more about how and why he's killed, but trust me it was one deserved end.

Though Forever Amber is a good film, it could have been far better, but for censorship problems. Still it provides Darnell, Sanders, and Haydn with some of their best career parts and is worth seeing.