Añade un argumento en tu idiomaIn seventeenth-century England, Amber St. Clair aims to raise herself from country girl to nobility, and succeeds, but loses her true love in the process.In seventeenth-century England, Amber St. Clair aims to raise herself from country girl to nobility, and succeeds, but loses her true love in the process.In seventeenth-century England, Amber St. Clair aims to raise herself from country girl to nobility, and succeeds, but loses her true love in the process.
- Dirección
- Guión
- Reparto principal
- Nominado para 1 premio Óscar
- 3 premios y 1 nominación en total
- Lord Redmond
- (as Edmond Breon)
- Bess
- (escenas eliminadas)
Reseñas destacadas
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.
The cast performs ably under the legendarily tyrranical Otto Preminger, whose direction of some sequences does seem a bit perfunctory. Linda Darnell is gorgeously gowned and lovingly photographed in three-strip Technicolor by Leon Shamroy, at his professional best. (I will agree that some scenes, especially at the beginning, seem a bit underlit, possibly due to an inferior VHS video transfer...I have never seen this on a big screen.) Miss Darnell holds her own against the likes of George Sanders, giving one of his wittiest performances as King Charles II, and her line readings, spoken in that delicious speaking voice of hers, ring true for the most part. The always reliable Richard Haydn, as the loathsome Earl of Radcliffe, convinces us that his grisly fate is well-deserved. And even the usually laconic Cornel Wilde convinces as a suitable object of Amber's steadfastly unrequited passion.
Best of all David Raksin's score achieves near-operatic grandeur, lending a sensual sweep that underscores one of Twentieth's really memorable costumers. Alfred Newman, head of Twentieth's music department, masterfully conducted Raksin's music, back in the days when the major studios employed full-time orchestras of musicians whose talents rivalled the players of the best symphony orchestras of the day and, perhaps, even now. Of course the video's audio track doesn't do the musical score the justice it deserves and it may be that in the late Forties when this was made, only the Warner Brothers studio sound technicians achieved full sonority on the optical tracks on which were recorded the scores of Korngold and Steiner and the other masters who worked at that rival studio.
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!
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.
¿Sabías que...?
- CuriosidadesTo recreate the foggy British atmosphere on the set, the crew used a mixture which was vaporized over the place, but became rapidly laxative. As a result, half of the crew got diarrhea after breathing and swallowing the artificial fog.
- Citas
King Charles II: [at a royal ball] Look at them. My loving subjects. You'd never know that half of them danced in Puritan garb while my father went to the chopping block.
Amber St. Clair: [moved] No wonder you seek solace in amusement, sire.
Amber St. Clair: [slyly] Can a common trollop help you to forget?
- Créditos adicionalesPrologue: "1644--The English Parliament and Oliver Cromwell's army have revolted against the tyrannical rule of Charles I. England is aflame with civil war..."
- Versiones alternativasA couple of weeks after its record breaking premiere, studio heads finally caved into Catholic protests and re-cut the movie. Among the changes:
- References to Amber's sex life and any acts of non-marital romance were cut.
- SPOILER: A new ending in which Amber watches her son go off with Bruce.
- Redubbed dialogue in the form of Cornell Wilde repentative of his behaviour: "In Heaven's name, Amber, haven't we caused enough unhappiness?" and "May God have mercy on us both for our sins."
- Also a prologue was added that condemned the character's actions: "This is the tragic story of Amber St. Claire... slave to ambition.. stranger to virtue... the wages of sin is death".
- ConexionesFeatured in 20th Century-Fox: The First 50 Years (1997)
Selecciones populares
- How long is Forever Amber?Con tecnología de Alexa
Detalles
Taquilla
- Presupuesto
- 6.000.000 US$ (estimación)
- Duración2 horas 18 minutos
- Relación de aspecto
- 1.37 : 1
Contribuir a esta página
