Forever Amber

Linda Darnell stars as the titular Amber St. Clair in this lavish but dreary costume drama. Set during the English Civil War, the story follows a girl of noble birth raised as a puritan farmer's daughter, who wants more out of life than to marry a pig farmer. She escaped to London, following a soldier, Bruce Carlton (Cornel Wilde), though he soon leaves alone and pregnant. But nothing will stop Amber from reaching the top of the social strata. She goes from debtors prison to star of the stage, to duchess, to potential royal consort, but she never stops loving the soldier.

It's amazing such a popular film in 1947 would be about an independent woman who has a child out of wedlock and takes on five lovers over the course of the 2-hour 20-minute running time. But despite the racy material, this is a dull picture. It was penned by two of Hollywood's best screenwriters, Philip Dunne and Ring Lardner Jr. (who both hated the source novel), and directed by a completely disinterested Otto Preminger (who took over from John M. Stahl when studio boss Darrel F. Zanuck shut down production and replaced the original Amber, Peggy Cummins, with Darnell. Preminger brings none of the visual flare he was known for in his noir pictures to a movie he clearly didn't want to make. The production was extremely expensive due to having to reshoot the first thirty-nine days of filming with Cummins.

The costumes all look like... well, costumes. The performances are wooden. Darnell is beautiful and does a decent job, but the part should be a bold, exciting character. Instead, we just wonder why the hell she's so hung up on the insufferable Bruce. You know a movie is dead when George Sanders playing the King of England isn't much fun. Even the Technicolor is bland in this picture. The bones of a good story are there Amber works her way through several interesting historical periods, but no one connected to the movie seems to care much. That didn't stop it from being the fifth most successful box office hit of the year, despite being condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency (or many that's why it was such a big hit!)