Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor is a sweeping novel that follows the exploits of a young girl who grew up on a farm but dreamed of wealth and extravagance. When she meets Bruce Carlton, she lusts for him and gives into her desires, but when she does, she knows she can never return home. She tags along with Bruce and his friend Lord Almsbury, living the high life she always dreamed of, but it is temporary. He soon gets called away for military service, and although he leaves her with some money to care for her, she is ignorant about such matters and also pregnant.
She tries getting married to give her condition legitimacy, but it turns out she has been swindled into supporting a slovenly man with bad teeth. He takes everything, leaving her with debts and only one place to go, the jailhouse to work off her fine. A series of acquaintances and lots of coupling brings Amber higher and higher in the social rankings as she ascends by laughing in the face of morality. There is a serial atmosphere to the pacing and the seemingly impossible situations Amber finds herself in. We are left on cliffhanger after cliffhanger wondering "How could she possibly escape?" But she always does, one way or another.
The novel is quite long, covering about a decade of Amber's life as well as the lives of King Charles, his mistresses, Amber's lovers, their children, Bruce, Almsbury, and several actresses as well as historical events like the English Civil Wars, the Great Fire of London and the Bubonic Plague. There are clear parallels to Gone With the Wind, a best-seller eight years before this book. They both feature lush, tone-setting scores, this one by David Raskin. Amber is very much like an unlucky version of Scarlett O'Hara, an independent, stubborn, flirtatious woman who uses her femininity to get what she wants, and succeeds again and again. But where Scarlet lacked beauty and had brains, Amber has beauty and lacks brains.
Of course, many things had to be cut for the adaptations. Margaret Mitchell's 1000+ pages became a 4-hour film; Winsor's 800ish pages was reduced to a 2-hour and 18-minute film. We lose Amber's first husband, who gives her the last name St. Clair. Her wealthy elderly husband and his large genteel family are excised completely, a real loss for us, as this was one of my favorite sequences in the book. (I imagined gentle old Lewis Stone in this part and was curious to see who Hollywood had cast. As it turns out, they chose no one. Stone must've been unavailable.) Amber's titled husband's impotence is only implied, and her bored affair with his relative's husband is cut completely. Her last husband is omitted too.
Both of the leads lack the sex appeal necessary for their characters. Darnell is exquisitely beautiful, but she isn’t alluring enough for the role. Amber is cheap in spite of her wealth; she lacks the class that her rival possesses. Darnell is pristine, an adjective that could never describe Amber. Peggy Cummins was originally cast in the part, but she was replaced when the studio decided they wanted a bigger name to play the coveted role. It is tantalizing to think what she would have done in the film considering her nasty portrayal in Gun Crazy a few years later. However, her look was more ice cream social than sexpot. Cornel Wilde is vanilla in the role of Bruce Carlton which cried out for a wry Clark Gable type of actor. This character, like Rhett Butler, is the type of man who looks at a woman as if he “knows what [she] looks like without her shimmy.” Wilde is stiff and uncomfortable in his fluffy mullet wig. I suspect that his casting had a lot to do with his accomplishments in fencing, having been on the US Olympic team, but he only gets to utilize it in the duel scene. I found George Sanders to be completely miscast as King Charles, a man who had the vitality and restlessness of a teenager, not the pessimistic sloth of a jaded old man. Dream casting for Amber would be someone like Gloria Grahame, or better yet, someone newly under contract at Twentieth Century Fox, a young Marilyn Monroe. Dana Andrews could have been a good choice for Bruce Carlton, or Robert Mitchem who would have been slightly too young for the part, but certainly appealing enough.
The fact that this novel was even attempted to be filmed in an era when very little of the content would pass the censor is indicative of its popularity. Fox paid Winsor $200,000 for the rights. The sumptuous costumes and detailed sets show that this was an expensive production; internet sources quote $6.5 million. Art Director Lyle Weaver, who won an Oscar for his work on Gone with the Wind, was hired for Forever Amber, and costumes were done by Rene Hubert who had experience doing historical subjects from films like The Song of Bernadette, Hangover Square and My Darling Clementine. The Technicolor could have been used more effectively. Rather than simply showing off the elaborateness of the production values, it could have illustrated Amber's outlook. She lives for city life and the fast excess that comes with it. These scenes should have been the most saturated and colorful, while her country life and the stale house she shares with the Earl of Radcliffe should have been drab, sparse and monochromatic. A missed opportunity for sure, though the out-of-print Twilight Time Blu-ray shows the film at its best, as opposed to faded bootlegs or fuzzy VHS transfers.
The Catholic Legion of Decency graded the film a C for condemned upon first release, so the studio did some editing, adding a prologue and changing the ending, which now feels abrupt, in order for their rating to soften. Spyros Skouras, president of Twentieth Century Fox said, "We sought with painstaking effort to produce in Forever Amber a picture against which no objections would be raised." Motion Picture Herald reviewer Red Kann said, "Many of the deciding climaxes are pat and conveniently arranged for proper dovetailing."
The film fails to deliver the steamy promises of the novel. However, I believe that if someone attempted to adapt this story to the screen today it would go too far in the other direction, wallowing in the smut instead of just implying enough to titillate. At heart, Forever Amber is an unrequited love story between Amber and the man who took her virginity. No matter what happens to them on the side, their relationship is always the A story. The film is worth a watch, but to fully appreciate the sensation of Forever Amber, you've got to read the book, which is fortunately still in print.
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