Otto Preminger is a director whose movies I've come to really admire and enjoy, from his early black and white noirs of the mid - 40's to his boundary-challenging movies of the mid-to-late 50's and his political thrillers of the early 60's. While he has probably never had the consistency to be accorded the reverence paid to, say Hitchcock or Ford, or more recently perceived auteurs like say Wyler and Hawks, I find myself rating many of his movies quite highly. How then, he landed this gig of adapting a popular, racy historical novel of the day for the big screen, is difficult to credit.
It is what it is, as the phrase goes. It's a richly decorated costume drama concerning the rather unoriginal story of a baby girl, abandoned by her Cavalier family during the 17th Century English Civil War and left Moses-like at the door of a Puritan Roundhead middle-aged couple to be brought up in their image as a God-fearing do-gooder young woman, to be married off at the earliest opportunity to the local neighbour's son. Well, Moses young Amber isn't and when she starts to realise the effect of her dazzling beauty on men of all social positions, it's obvious she'll not be chained to a life of dull drudgery. Instead, she will unabashedly use her considerable attributes and feminine wiles to move her up the social ladder, in the end leading her all the way up into the orbit of the philandering King Charles II. The only trouble is she's still madly in love with her first and only love, the adventurer Bruce Carlton, also the father of her son. How will Amber's conflicting loyalties resolve themselves and will she ever find true love?
All Preminger merely has to do here is set up his cameras and let the episodic moments occur in Amber's eventful life. Adapting chameleon-like to her surroundings, be they a prison or the Royal Court, her ruthless ambition and determination to succeed are unstoppable, with only two men able to thwart her, Carlton and the King. The Production Code was still in play and Preminger this early in his career wasn't about to test it as he would in the 50's, so a lot of Amber's shenanigans are diluted for the viewing public, even if its still fairly obvious to deduce that she didn't get ahead by playing the choir-girl.
The movie certainly sprawls as Preminger piles in the major incidents of the courtesan's lurid life and he gets good performances from Linda Darnell in the title role and especially George Sanders as the sly old king, the one person better than Amber at practicing the dark art of deception.
I enjoyed the film without ever really engaging with it, often admiring the backgrounds and costumes more than the drama itself. The film had a massive budget and it was Preminger's main job I guess to present the movie in such a way as to ensure it made its money back and that it did. It is possible to make a blockbuster movie which has lasting cinematic merit but "Forever Amber" isn't one of those and isn't really one of those I would choose to sit through again in a hurry.
It is what it is, as the phrase goes. It's a richly decorated costume drama concerning the rather unoriginal story of a baby girl, abandoned by her Cavalier family during the 17th Century English Civil War and left Moses-like at the door of a Puritan Roundhead middle-aged couple to be brought up in their image as a God-fearing do-gooder young woman, to be married off at the earliest opportunity to the local neighbour's son. Well, Moses young Amber isn't and when she starts to realise the effect of her dazzling beauty on men of all social positions, it's obvious she'll not be chained to a life of dull drudgery. Instead, she will unabashedly use her considerable attributes and feminine wiles to move her up the social ladder, in the end leading her all the way up into the orbit of the philandering King Charles II. The only trouble is she's still madly in love with her first and only love, the adventurer Bruce Carlton, also the father of her son. How will Amber's conflicting loyalties resolve themselves and will she ever find true love?
All Preminger merely has to do here is set up his cameras and let the episodic moments occur in Amber's eventful life. Adapting chameleon-like to her surroundings, be they a prison or the Royal Court, her ruthless ambition and determination to succeed are unstoppable, with only two men able to thwart her, Carlton and the King. The Production Code was still in play and Preminger this early in his career wasn't about to test it as he would in the 50's, so a lot of Amber's shenanigans are diluted for the viewing public, even if its still fairly obvious to deduce that she didn't get ahead by playing the choir-girl.
The movie certainly sprawls as Preminger piles in the major incidents of the courtesan's lurid life and he gets good performances from Linda Darnell in the title role and especially George Sanders as the sly old king, the one person better than Amber at practicing the dark art of deception.
I enjoyed the film without ever really engaging with it, often admiring the backgrounds and costumes more than the drama itself. The film had a massive budget and it was Preminger's main job I guess to present the movie in such a way as to ensure it made its money back and that it did. It is possible to make a blockbuster movie which has lasting cinematic merit but "Forever Amber" isn't one of those and isn't really one of those I would choose to sit through again in a hurry.