Blithe Spirit (1945)

While I’ve never been much of a fan of David Lean’s later grandiose films I did enjoy Brief Encounter and had heard glowing reports of his 1945 Blithe Spirit so I decided to take a chance on it.

It is of course based on Noël Coward’s hit play. Coward produced and co-wrote the film.

Charles Condomine (Rex Harrison) and his second wife Ruth (Constance Cummings) are happily married. Charles is a mystery writer and as research for his next book he has arranged for renowned medium Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) to conduct a séance. Neither Charles nor any of the other participants have any belief in the occult but if nothing else it should be amusing. 

And Charles hopes to learn some of the tricks used by phoney mediums. 

Unfortunately it turns out that Madame Arcati is not a fraud after all and she manages to materialise a ghost. The ghost is Charles’s first wife Elvira (Kay Hammond) who died seven years earlier.

Even more unfortunately it seems that Elvira intends to stay. Permanently. And, as you might imagine, Ruth is less than entranced by the idea of having her husband’s deceased first wife as a permanent house guest. These two women do not exactly get along.

Ruth might be displeased but Elvira is thoroughly enjoying herself. She likes nothing more than to stir up trouble.

It is not possible to touch Elvira but she can pick up objects and can even drive Charles’s car.

Madame Arcati has no idea how to send Elvira back to the spirit world. Or rather she has lots of ideas but none of them work.

And Elvira has returned for a reason. She has a scheme in mind.

It’s all sparkling lighthearted fun, and occasionally slightly risqué compared to Hollywood movies of the same era. Elvira and Charles had not been very faithful to each other. Adultery had been a favourite pastime for both husband and wife. 

The movie’s biggest strength is its terrific cast. Rex Harrison has just the right kind of amused charming cynicism for this material. Kay Hammond shines as the exasperating and slightly wicked Elvira. Constance Cummings is very solid.

And Margaret Rutherford is, as always, an utter delight as the dotty Madame Arcati.

As director David Lean displays a lightness of touch that is sadly lacking in his later work and the pacing is pleasingly brisk.

The special effects are simple but they work.

Blithe Spirit was shot in Technicolor and looks lovely.

This is a witty and wickedly amusing movie and it’s delightfully cynical. It’s a great deal of fun and it’s highly recommended.

My copy is the Spanish Blu-Ray which offers a fine transfer and includes the original English-language version with removable Spanish subtitles.

I’ve also reviewed Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945).

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947)

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, released in 1947, is based on Guy de Maupassant’s 1885 novel Bel Ami, or, The History of a Scoundrel: A Novel.

It is Paris in 1880. Georges Duroy (George Sanders), an ex-cavalyman now just barely eking out a living in a menial job, is thrown a lifeline by his old army buddy Charles Forestier (John Carradine). Forestier is a successful journalist and is sure he can wangle Georges a job. He could write about his experiences. Georges has no idea how to write but Forestier’s beautiful clever ambitious wife Madeleine (Ann Dvorak) gives him a crash course.

Georges gets the job and is modestly successful but he is aiming much higher. He is ambitious for money and influence but is also driven by resentment about his humble provincial upbringing.

He is introduced to a charming and pretty young widow, Clotilde de Marelle (Angela Lansbury). He takes her to the most notoriously disreputable dive in Paris. Clotilde is delighted. Clotilde is soon madly in love with him. She gives him the name Bel-Ami (from a popular song).

But for Georges women are merely stepping-stones to advancement. As cute as she is marriage to Clotilde will not advance his career.

He has some other marriage options in mind. He’s an effective muck-raking journalist and he is clever and devious in various ways but he knows that marriage is the most effective way to get ahead - there’s no better way to gain riches, influence and respectability. At one point in the story he is stringing four women along simultaneously. It’s just a matter of making the most astute choice. If he sets his sights on a woman and she isn’t interested he is confident he can break down her resistance. He has a lot of charm and no scruples at all.

His only redeeming quality is that at least he knows he is a cad.

Laroche-Mathieu (Warren William) is just as much of a scoundrel but much less honest about it. Georges has plans to make Laroche-Mathieu Foreign Secretary. Laroche-Mathieu is a fool, a hypocrite, a liar, a coward and a swine so he has all the qualities needed to be a Cabinet Minister.

Of course some of the women whom he uses come to hate him. Clotilde just loves him more and more.

Of course Georges is now like a juggler trying to keep a lot of balls in the air all at once so he cannot afford a single mistake.

This is very much a studio picture, shot on sound stages and the backlot with Paris represented by plenty of matte paintings. I love this kind of golden age Hollywood artificiality.

George Sanders is at his caddish best. He’s a delight. 

Warren William and John Carradine are very good. Ann Dvorak is excellent as a woman almost as ambitious and ruthless as Georges himself. Whether she is as clever remains to be seen. Angela Lansbury is terrific. She is a fool where Georges is concerned but the tenacity of her love gives her some dignity.

Of course this was the Production Code era so there’s a lot of stuff that is implied rather than overt. Does Madeleine have a rich older lover? It’s strongly suggested without actually being stated. Does Georges bed the various women he pursues? It’s left ambiguous. There’s an atmosphere of decadence but it’s handled cautiously.

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami is stylish and rather delicious and it’s highly recommended.

Writer-director Albert Lewin only made a handful of films but they included the superb Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951). His final feature film was the horror movie/jungle adventure The Living Idol (1957) which is way better than you might expect.

Madame Bovary (1949)

Madame Bovary is a 1949 MGM adaptation, directed by Vincente Minnelli, of Gustave Flaubert’s 1857 novel.

Despite the Production Code Hollywood was well aware that what audiences wanted was sex and sin. They could not offer them those things so they perfected the art of the tease. In this case they’ve even added a framing story covering Flaubert’s trial for obscenity. This is a movie based on a novel so wicked that even in France it was labeled obscene! That’s a surefire way to get bums on seats.

There’s also voiceover narration supposedly by Flaubert. Along with the framing story this has an odd distancing effect since he is not telling us about something that happened, but merely about imaginary events from his novel. The framing story is a disastrously stupid idea, making the audience feel less involved and less interested.

With Madame Bovary the problem was just how far could the tease go without arousing the ire of the Production Code Authority? Unless certain things are made clear (namely the heroine’s adultery) the story won’t make sense, but they have to be made clear without being brought right out into the open. In this case a discarded hat tells us that hanky-panky has taken place.

This is the story of Emma (Jennifer Jones), who marries a humble country doctor, Charles Bovary (Van Heflin). Emma has spent her girlhood immersed in a world of dreams - dreams of adventure, excitement and romance. She does not cope well with the reality of life as the wife of an obscure village doctor.

She has a serious flirtation with a young law clerk. Things get more dangerous when she and her husband are invited to the Marquis D’Andervilliers’ ball. She meets Rodolphe Boulanger (Louis Jourdan). He is impossibly dashing and handsome. He is the dream lover she always wanted.

The ball is an opportunity for Minnelli to give us a bit of a master class in film directing. Couples are whirling on the dance floor. Emma and Rodolphe are whirling, whirling, whirling. Emma doesn’t know it but her life is now whirling as well, like a mad dance. It gets more and frenzied and then there are the windows - I won’t spoil it by telling you what happens with the windows but it’s a brilliant moment of madness. This is a ball from a nightmare and it’s the highlight of the movie.

If you’re going to do a melodrama you must not hold back. You have to go for broke. Minnelli knew this.

Jennifer Jones also knew this (as anyone who has seen Duel in the Sun can attest). So did Louis Jourdan. And Van Heflin is absolutely perfectly cast as the bewildered husband.

Emma Bovary is certainly a very bad girl. Her husband cannot sweep her off her feet and she needs to be swept off her feet but he is a good man and a good husband. There are no mitigating circumstances there for her betrayal. And we must be sceptical as to whether he loves Rodolphe - she is in love with a dream and with the dream life she thinks he can offer her. There are lots of mirror shots, suggesting that Emma is somehow outside of real life. Which she is. She is in her fairy tale world of dashing princes.

The Emma Bovary of this movie is not a femme fatale. She’s not clever enough or focused enough. She gets herself into trouble not so much through scheming and duplicity but rather through recklessness and stupidity. She has the mind of a naïve selfish little girl but the sexual allure of a very grown-up temptress. All her schemes are childish. She is doomed by her inability to understand that fairy tales and romantic fantasies lead to disaster when they run up against reality.

It was presumably the Production Code that led to the decision to make Emma a woman driven by greed rather than lust. It’s a movie that needed to be a bit more sleazy but MGM obviously were not prepared to take such a risk.

My big issue is that the character of Rodolphe doesn’t ring true, and the Emma-Rodolphe relationship doesn’t ring true. I can’t help suspecting that changes had to be made to the script and that this might have cued the problems. Unfortunately it mens that a crucial late scene comes across as odd and puzzling.

The film was a major box-office flop and it has never been deemed worthy of critical reevaluation. It’s a flawed but interesting melodrama, better than its reputation would suggest. Recommended.

You’ll Never Get Rich (1941)

Given that You’ll Never Get Rich, released by Columbia in 1941, was the first movie that teamed Fred Astaire with Rita Hayworth and that it was the movie that made her a star I was looking forward to watching it. In fact it turned out to be a huge disappointment for a variety of reasons.

Robert Curtis (Fred Astaire) is producing a Broadway show. Sheila Winthrop (Rita Hayworth) is one of the chorus girls. The owner of the theatre, Martin Cortland (Robert Benchley), is pursuing Sheila while trying not to let his wife find out about it. He tries to cover his tracks by making it appear that Robert is the one pursuing her. Both Robert and Sheila realise they’re being manipulated and they’re soon at odds with each other.

The first time Rita Hayworth appears on the screen we’re knocked out by her star quality, her beauty, her charm and her wit.

So at this early stage the movie looks like it’s going to be a fine breezy musical romance.

Then it becomes a totally different movie. It becomes a service comedy, and there is no species of movie I dislike more than service comedies. This was 1941, America was not yet in the war but Hollywood had worked itself up into a war frenzy which presumably explains why we get to see Fred Astaire in uniform and most of the film takes place on an army base. War was coming (or at least that’s what Hollywood hoped) and it was going to be so much fun.

It’s not just a service comedy, it’s a lame service comedy. The comedy is not just feeble it’s excruciating.

Inevitably this switch means that Rita Hayworth gets nowhere near as much screen time as she should get. She gets few opportunities to dance with Astaire and they have only one great dance together. This is a problem since Hayworth is the best thing in the movie. In fact she’s the only good thing in the movie.

You’ll Never Get Rich is in black-and-white. That’s OK, I love black-and-white movies. But the 1930s RKO Astaire Rogers movies had exquisite black-and-white cinematography and stunning sets. You’ll Never Get Rich has dreary black-and-white cinematography and boring ugly sets.

Even the costumes are dull, apart from one really nice dress won by Hayworth. But she should have been put in lots of gorgeous dresses.

It has a score by Cole Porter (something which should be a major asset) but it’s an entirely forgettable score.

The screenplay, by Michael Fessier and Ernest Paganoin, is feeble. The service comedy plot is the film’s major plot strand and it should have been ditched in its entirety. The love story between Fred and Rita is relegated to being a minor subplot when in fact it should he been the whole movie. The entire script should have been thrown in the trash can and decent writers hired to write a new one.

Director Sidney Lanfield’s efforts are barely competent.

Hayworth is great but Astaire is all at sea with material that doesn’t suit him at all. Robert Benchley is a lot of fun as the inept philanderer. The other members of the supporting cast are either unmemorable or irritating.

I hate to say this but this is a terrible movie. Unless you’re a Rita Hayworth completist it’s not worth bothering with.

The second (and final) Astaire-Hayworth musical, You Were Never Lovelier, is much much better. In fact it’s terrific.

Music in My Heart (1940)

Music in My Heart is a 1940 Columbia musical. Rita Hayworth is the female lead but this is pre-stardom Rita Hayworth. This is Rita on the cusp of stardom. When you watch this movie you can tell that it was just a matter of time. The star quality is there.

Tony Martin plays Robert Gregory, almost a musical comedy star. He is at least the understudy to the star. Now he finally gets to play the lead, but his visa has expired and he’s about to be kicked out of the country.

He’s on the way to the pier to board his ship when his cab crashes into a cab containing Patricia O'Malley (Rita Hayworth). She needs to get to the ship as well. Her husband-to-be Charles Spencer Gardner III (Alan Mowbray) is awaiting her. He’s a millionaire. She is pretty pleased with herself for snaring a rich husband.

They both miss the boat, literally. Now Robert has the cops after him and Patricia has missed out on her rich husband.

Of course they’re going to fall in love and have impossible obstacles to surmount.

Gardner’s manservant Griggs (Eric Blore) is plotting to bring his master and Patricia back together.

Patricia’s kid sister Mary (Edith Fellows) is plotting to bring his master and Robert together.

Patricia lives in a rooming house. On the ground floor is a restaurant run by Sascha (George Tobias), a crazy White Russian who is planning to restore the Romanovs, and a penniless Italian. They’re about to be evicted. They can’t pay their rent.

The plot is standard romantic farce and it works perfectly well.

Eric Blore is alway a joy to watch.

With Rita Hayworth not yet a star this movie was conceived as a star vehicle for Tony Martin. He’s OK but he doesn’t quite have the necessary charm or charisma.

Rita gets plenty of screen time, she really is the female lead, but musically the movie is built around Tony Martin’s singing rather than Hayworth’s dancing. Had the movie been made a year later the balance would obviously have been reversed.

While Rita gets very little dancing to do she gets plenty of opportunities to demonstrate her comic talents and her potential as one of the great romantic stars. She outshines her leading man Tony Martin to an embarrassing degree.

Andre Kostelanetz and His Orchestra are heavily featured. They would become hugely popular on record in the 50s and it’s perhaps surprising that they didn’t feature in more movies. Chet Forrest and Bob Wright wrote the songs one of which, It’s A Blue World, was a reasonably big hit for Tony Martin.

Joseph Santley had a long and prolific career as a director without ever attracting much attention. He does a competent job here.

The one big big problem is that Columbia knew they had a future star in Rita Hayworth but hadn’t yet figured out what kind of star and hadn’t realised that it might be a good idea to give the kid plenty of chances to do some serious dancing. That’s all that’s missing here. If they’d added a couple of dances for Rita it could have been a huge hit.

As it stands it’s still quite entertaining. It’s so fluffy and lightweight that the slightest breeze would waft it away but it’s amusing and likeable. A must for Rita Hayworth fans. Highly recommended.

You Were Never Lovelier (1942)

You Were Never Lovelier is a 1942 musical starring Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth. It includes absolutely every ingredient you could ask for in a bubbly musical romance.

Robert Davis (Fred Astaire) is a famed New York dance star and he’s in Buenos Aires and he’s just lost his last dollar at the racetrack. He needs a job pronto. He figures he can talk his way into a dancing gig at the Sky Room, the swankiest night spot in Buenos Aires. Unfortunately the Sky Room is owned by the irascible Eduardo Acuña (Adolphe Menjou) who takes an instant dislike to the New Yorker. But then Acuña doesn’t get along with anybody.

Acuña has his own problem. He has four daughters. They’re lovely girls but family tradition demands that they should get married in birth order. The oldest has just been married. That means it’s the turn of Maria (Rita Hayworth). And Maria isn’t interested in marriage.

Maria has the reputation of being an ice queen. The truth is the exact opposite. She’s a wildly romantic girl. That’s why she hasn’t fallen in love. She is waiting for a dashing man to sweep her off her feet.

Acuña has cooked up a crazy scheme to make Maria think she has a secret admirer. To his horror Maria gets the idea that Robert Davis is her secret admirer. Acuña thinks Davis is a scoundrel.

All the expected romantic complications and misunderstandings ensue. Robert did not expect to fall in love with the girl.

And those complications are handled skilfully and wittily and charmingly by the script.

Adolphe Menjou is delightfully scheming and cantankerous. He’s not villainous. He’s just used to getting his own way and thinks he can manipulate his daughter because he thinks that he understands how to handle women. In his own way he means well but he creates emotional chaos.

Fred Astaire plays another variation on the hyperactive but charming persona he had perfected at RKO in the 30s.

Rita Hayworth is breathtakingly gorgeous and adorable.

Of course if you’re going to be Fred Astaire’s leading lady you’re going to have to be able not only to dance but dance superbly. And Rita Hayworth most certainly could dance. Astaire was apparently very impressed indeed by her dancing abilities. Their dances together are terrific. As usual her singing voice is dubbed.

And they have good chemistry. The main reason to see this movie is most definitely to see Astaire and Hayworth together. It is a pity they only made two movies together.

It’s all delightful but somehow it just can’t quite match the best of the Astaire Rogers musicals of the 30. RKO gave those movies a distinctive aesthetic (with a touch of fantasy) which this movie lacks. The settings look good but a bit generic. It doesn’t have the same magical flavour.

These minor quibbles aside this is a charming lightweight escapist musical. Recommended.

I don’t think it’s had a Blu-Ray release but the older DVD release looks fine.

The Undercover Man (1949)

The Undercover Man is a 1949 Columbia crime thriller directed by Joseph H. Lewis.

It is obviously inspired by the Al Capone case. It had become clear that there was no way of convicting Capone for racketeering. Then the Federal Government figured out that they didn’t need to. They could get him for tax fraud instead. They didn’t care what they put him in prison for as long as they put him in prison.

The Undercover Man deals with a similar case set in an unnamed city involving an unnamed big-time gangster (referred to simply as the Big Fellow). This is essentially a police procedural. For Treasury Special Agent Frank Warren (Glenn Ford) and his colleagues it’s a lengthy painstaking investigation. They have to go through thousands of accounts, looking for some small slip-up made by the mobsters. This might sound like a boring setup for a movie but in fact it’s gripping and fascinating.

They cannot find a slip-up but they can find a stool pigeon. This seems likely to solve their problems but it doesn’t and it’s back to the grind. But there is always the possibility of another stool pigeon. No matter how terrified the Big Fellow’s underlings might be there will always be someone crazy enough or desperate enough or greedy enough to sell out even the scariest mob boss. T-Men like Frank Warren know this. It’s just a matter of handling stool pigeons the right way, and making sure they don’t become dead stool pigeons.

The focus is on methodical law enforcement work but also on the effect that lengthy tough dangerous cases have on the investigating officers. The dangers are real and the stress is extreme, and the endless frustrations can wear a man down.

Glenn Ford was perfect casting for a role like this. He was a low-key actor and he plays Frank Warren as a man who has mastered the art of keeping his emotions under control. To be a good T-Man you have to be able to function like a machine, but Ford has no problem showing us that Frank really is a man and not a machine. He can switch off his emotions to get the job done but he has a wife and if forced to choose between the job and his wife he would choose his wife. It’s that stubborn underlying decency and humanity that makes him a formidable enemy to monsters. There were few actors as subtle as Glenn Ford.

There’s a very competent supporting cast with Barry Kelley as the very crooked but very clever Mob lawyer O’Rourke being the standout.

Nina Foch as Frank’s wife gets almost nothing to do. That is perhaps deliberate. The focus is on Frank Warren. His love for his wife is a central motivation for him but there’s no need for the movie to get bogged down in the details of his domestic life. Frank Warren and O’Rourke and the battle of wits between them provide the core of the movie.

This is not film noir. It has none of the key ingredients of film noir. It does however have some of the tone and feel of the movies that would later be labelled as film noir. You could say it’s noir-tinged. Mostly it’s a very tough very gritty hardboiled crime thriller/police procedural.

It has a touch of that semi-documentary (or pseudo-documentary) approach that was becoming fashionable in movies like The Naked City. Burnett Guffey’s cinematography helps.

Incidentally there are no undercover men at all in this movie!

Joseph H. Lewis is best-known for Gun Crazy and The Big Combo but some of his more obscure movies such as A Lady Without Passport and Cry of the Hunted are worth tracking down. Maybe The Undercover Man is not quite top-tier Lewis but it’s tense and gripping and it has an authentic feel and it’s highly recommended.

The Powerhouse Indicator Blu-Ray provides a very nice transfer. The extras include an audio commentary.

Lust for Gold (1949)

The posters might suggest that Lust for Gold, released by Columbia in 1949, is going to be a western. It isn’t. Not quite. It is set in the West but it’s a thriller and the setting is contemporary. Or at least partly.

The original director was George Marshall but he walked off the set early on and producer S. Sylvan Simon took over directing duties.

The movie is based on the story of a real-life lost mine that has never been found.

The movie is about what the title says it’s about. Gold fever. Somewhere in the vast sprawling expanse of Superstition Mountain there is a lost mine (the legendary Dutchman Mine) and a huge hoard of gold. Enough gold to get twenty men murdered over the previous 70 years. If the Apache legends are correct then a lot more men than that have died for this gold.

And nobody knows for sure that there is any gold. Or if there is any chance of finding it.

Young Barry Storm (William Prince) has just seen the twentieth man die on the mountain. Barry’s grandfather Jacob Walz claimed to be the owner of the mine.

Barry becomes obsessed with finding the mine. He finds an old guy who tells him Jacob Walz’s story. This is not so much a main story bookended by a framing story as two distinct stories taking place decades apart both dealing with a search for the mine. There are multiple murders in both stories.

In 1887 Jacob Walz (Glenn Ford) found the mine. The mine had at that time been lost for many years. He becomes involved with a woman who owns a bakery in the nearby town. She is Julia (Ida Lupino). The connection between Julia and Pete Thomas (Gig Young) guarantees that things will get very messy.

What follows is a sordid tale of human depravity. It’s not just the lust for gold. There’s sexual lust, emotional betrayal, jealousy and a web of deceit.

The plot is delightfully overheated. Both stories have wild crazy endings. In fact there’s a third ending and it’s wild and crazy as well.

This is a fairly rare chance to see Glenn Ford as an out-and-out bad guy and yet in his own strange way he’s an innocent and a victim. It’s a credit to Ford’s subtlety as an actor that he can make us feel oddly sympathetic towards Jacob even after we’ve seen him do some breathtakingly vicious things. Ford really is outstanding here.

Ida Lupino is extremely good as a woman who may be thoroughly rotten, partially rotten or just easily tempted or maybe she’s just out of control and has no idea which way she will jump next.

All the characters are reprehensible and yet all are perhaps victims. Men will do terrible things for gold or sex. And women will do equally terrible things. Although without that gold maybe all of these people would have been decent enough. Or maybe not. They have all been corrupted.

This is not a movie that casts humanity in a very flattering light.

I’m always leery of describing movies as noir westerns because in most cases they don’t really fit the noir mould. Having said that there are of course westerns that contain some of the elements that are found in the crime movies that were later labelled as film noir. During the 40s there had been a slight shift towards darker subject matter and a more cynical pessimistic edge in several genres. Lust for Gold falls into that category. It’s part of a trend that began in the 40s, towards harder-edged less conventionally heroic westerns

Ida Lupino can certainly be seen as a femme fatale here, leading every man she encounters to disaster. It might seem like a stretch to see Glenn Ford as Jacob as a noir protagonist (he’s already a very bad man at the start of the movie) but the argument could be made. Perhaps he could be redeemed by love. He does genuinely love Julia. But choosing Julia as a vehicle for redemption is a bad bad choice.

The plot (or plots) gets crazy enough and events spiral so much out of control that although it seems highly likely that things will end badly it’s difficult to predict exactly how disaster will strike. And there’s at least one wild plot twist you won’t see coming.

Lust for Gold is a rather oddball western-thriller genre hybrid and it’s exceptionally interesting. Highly recommended.

The Spanish Blu-Ray looks great. It includes the original English-language version with removable Spanish subtitles.

Forever Amber (1947)

Forever Amber is a glossy Technicolor 20th Century-Fox swashbuckling historical adventure romance directed by Otto Preminger (who was brought in to replace the original director John M. Stahl).

It was based on Kathleen Winsor’s steamy and scandalous 1944 novel of the same name which had attracted a firestorm of controversy and was banned for obscenity in many U.S. states. The Production Code Authority initially made it clear that they would not in any circumstances countenance a film adaptation. But they later relented. This was a fascinating period in Hollywood history, with growing pressure from the studios for a relaxation of the Production Code and a willingness by the Production Code Authority to compromise just a little.

Obviously the story had to be sanitised considerably but it does get away with quite a bit. It is made absolutely crystal clear that the heroine’s relationships with a series of men are sexual relationships.

The Catholic Legion of Decency condemned the movie on its release which helped to make Forever Amber a gigantic hit which broke box-office records.

The setting is England just after the Stuart Restoration in 1660. Bruce Carlton (Cornel Wilde) is seeking financial support from King Charles II for a privateering expedition. The King has reasons of his own for wanting Bruce to be far far away. The king fears that his latest mistress may be a bit too fond of the handsome Bruce.

On his way to London, at a little village named Marygreen, Bruce had met Amber St. Clair (Linda Darnell). Amber lives in humble circumstances and is about to be married off to a farmer, much to her horror. She does not see herself as a farmer’s wife. Amber has much higher ambitions. Bruce is good-looking and he has a title. He would make a splendid husband. But Bruce does not want an entanglement and sets off for sea without Amber.

Amber might be a gold digger but it is possible that she really does love Bruce. It becomes increasingly obvious that this really is the case.

Everything then goes wrong for Amber and she ends up in debtor’s prison. She becomes the mistress of a highwayman. She embarks on a career on the stage. In Restoration England it was assumed that all actresses were whores. She becomes the mistress of Captain Rex Morgan. And the things really start go wrong.

And there’s the baby to think of.

Amber will bounce back, and she will get kicked around again by fate and she’ll bounce back again.

Amber is the kind of heroine that Hollywood filmmakers liked at this time. She’s a very bad girl. She breaks all the moral rules. But she’s lively, likeable, feisty, exciting and very sexy. Rather than disapprove of her audiences were naturally going to adore her. Linda Darnell, a very underrated star, gives one of her best performance. She has no trouble making Amber a sympathetic complex bad girl. And for all her wickedness we know that she still loves Bruce. And while she breaks society’s moral rules she is never actually malicious.

Amber St Clair is not quite Scarlett O’Hara but the two women do have several things in common. They both have guts and they both have physical courage, but it’s a woman’s courage rather than a man’s courage. And they’re very hard to break - they both have a great deal of inner strength. A big difference compared to Hollywood today is that Hollywood in the 40s made movies featuring strong interesting female characters but they were very much women.

Linda Darnell really did deserve a better leading man. Cornel Wilde just doesn’t have the charisma needed. He’s the biggest weakness in the film.

George Sanders is of course terrific as King Charles II. He doesn’t play him as a mere wicked debauchee but as a man weighed down by duty who has to keep himself amused in order to keep going. And he plays him as a man who does actually have a sense of honour. He wants to get Amber into bed and he could abuse his power as king to force her to comply but he never does. That would be vulgar and dishonourable. Sanders also adds a slight sense of melancholy. Sanders and Darnell are by far the most impressive cast members.

It might seem like an odd movie for Otto Preminger to direct but considering his passionate loathing for the Production Code he might have enjoyed seeing how far he could push things.

Forever Amber doesn’t have a huge reputation, perhaps because it slots into every film genre that serious-minded critics automatically despise - it’s a costume drama, it’s a women’s melodrama, it’s a romance. It’s actually very enjoyable and Linda Darnell makes it very much worth seeing. Highly recommended.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

I saw the 1946 Hal Wallis production The Strange Love of Martha Ivers many years ago but remember absolutely nothing about it so seeing it now on Blu-Ray it’s all new to me.

The setting is a small town, Iverstown. We begin with a prologue. It is 1928. Young Martha Ivers is a poor little rich girl living with her sadistic tyrannical aunt. The aunt’s lawyer O’Neil is hoping for a share of the riches to send his bookish timid son Walter to Harvard.

Martha has run away yet again, aided by abetted by young Sam Masterson who shares Martha’s desire for freedom and adventure. Once again Martha gets caught. Then tragedy strikes but maybe it’s good luck for Martha and for the weaselly Walter.

Twenty years later Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) just happens to suffer car troubles and ends up back in Iverstown. He hasn’t seen the place since 1928.

Sam meets an interesting blonde, Toni Marachek (Lizabeth Scott). It’s a pickup, of a sort. Toni has a bus to catch but now that she’s met Sam the bus doesn’t interest her. She wonders if he would object to having a passenger when his car is repaired and he leaves Iverstown. When Lizabeth Scott makes a suggestion like that you don’t say no.

Toni is fascinating, vulnerable, troubled, lonely and desperate. The kind of gal you just know is going to lead you into a whole world of trouble but Sam doesn’t care. He doesn’t even care when she tells him she’s just been released from prison.

Martha now owns and controls Iverstown and she owns and controls Walter (Kirk Douglas). Walter is now the DA but he takes his orders from Martha.

Walter seems much too worried about Sam’s reappearance. Sam finds this puzzling.

Sam, Toni, Martha and Walter are soon caught in an intricate web of jealousy, suspicion, betrayal, guilt and fear. Fear of the past. In their own ways they’re all haunted by the past. It’s also a web of misunderstandings. None of then know as much as the others fear they do.

There are plot twists but it’s the character twists that are most interesting.

These are complicated people with tangled motivations which they themselves don’t fully understand. They’re unpredictable because they themselves have no idea what they’re going to do next.

These are people who might be evil, or mad, or weak, or deluded or just selfish. There are no straightforward heroes or heroines but also no straightforward villains or villainesses.

It’s interesting to see Kirk Douglas playing a weak, cowardly failure of a man. He’s dangerous in the way that cowards are always dangerous.

Van Heflin gives a nicely nuanced performance.

Lizabeth Scott is excellent. Barbara Stanwyck is at the top of her game. You figure one of these two will be the femme fatale, but which one?

This film is at best marginally film noir. It lacks the noir aesthetic. It’s more of a cruelly twisted melodrama than a noir. It does have some noir touches however so if you want to consider it film noir you can.

Either way The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is an extremely good extremely interesting movie.

It’s on Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber.