Ambre

"You've done very well for yourself, Amber."

With this line, Cornell Wilde's character shows himself a master of understatement. It is delivered coldly, with neither criticism nor respect.

FOREVER AMBER is the portrait of a peasant girl who refused to be destroyed by her poverty and the hopeless prospects awaiting her. She used her sexuality and her brains to become the King's consort.

This film presents a vivid portrait of life in England before the Cromwellian revolution. It was an amoral, extremely cynical, heartlessly cruel society.

Linda Darnell's performance is a tour de force. She manages to play the strumpet, while letting the audience see her strength of character shining through all the while. Her love for the fickle Bruce Carlton/Cornell Wilde is too deep for him to ever understand.

One of the most haunting episodes in classic films is the depiction of London in the grip of the Black Plague. Amber risks her life by staying at Bruce's side through his delirium and personally performing the surgery that saves him.

Amber's tragedy is one that every woman who has ever had to fight for herself in this world can recognize. The movie is far more than a period soap opera. In fact, with David Raksin's incredible orchestral score, the production could have provided the framework for the composition of a real opera.... La Boheme, move over!

Kathleen Windsor's racy best-seller lost some of its punch in transition to the screen--mainly because censorship restrictions forced a complete whitewash of Amber St. Clair's exploits in bed-hopping. What is left is mild compared to today's graphic depiction of sex--but since the story unfolds against an interesting historical background in London during the reign of Charles II, it is worth viewing. Linda Darnell was not the first choice for Amber--Peggy Cummins began the role but after filming several scenes was dismissed as being too immature. Linda makes a voluptuous, willful Amber. Cornel Wilde is excellent as Bruce Carlton, her true love--although an unrequited one by the film's end. George Sanders does a terrific job as Charles II, spouting some of the film's wittiest dialogue and clever in his cat-and-mouse game with Amber. Richard Haydn as the Earl of Radcliffe gives perhaps the most interesting performance in the entire film, particularly during the fire sequences. The London fire is staged with authority, as are the scenes involving the Black Plague. David Raksin's musical background is a sumptuous, richly textured score (now available on CD from Marco Polo records). A film full of rich details under Otto Preminger's direction--but not as strong because of censorship restrictions and the inability to tell the story the way Windsor wrote it. The ending is entirely too abrupt in the video print with the original lengthier ending missing for some reason. Fans of Linda Darnell and Cornel Wilde will especially like this one.

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.

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.

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.