" . . . and we have so much," Greer Garson says of her English "Four Per Center" first husband, Errol Flynn (that 4% since whittled down 75% during the past 130 years due to the tendency of Rich Rats to cannibalize each other). Greer Garson, along with her loves Robert Young and Walter Pidgeon, belongs to that class of people who are willing to get intimate with One Per Centers in order to share some of their "Betters"' creature comforts. Perhaps there's a word besides "prostitutes" to describe their ilk, but THAT FORSYTE WOMAN makes clear that Greer is bartering her beauty for a loveless marriage to provide a gilded roof over her head, while architect Robert and painter Walter are plying trades of virtually no social value just because the Super Rich are willing to bestow highly inflated valuations upon their esoteric "products." Janet Leigh throws a monkey wrench into this Greer and Errol and Bob and Walt grouping, earning her PSYCHO fate a decade later. Errol, on the other hand, takes the Forsytes to heart--and wants no part of them in Real Life. Instead, he plunges deeper and deeper into his ROBIN HOOD alter ego, leading Castro's Lost Boys to victory over Cuba's One Per Cent Fat Cats. (Please see CUBAN REBEL GIRLS, his final film.) Then the American CIA whacks him, because it's run by the Forsytes.

Based on the celebrated novels of Galsworthy, this lavish film focuses on a strong-willed woman who marries into a rich and powerful British family. It's a good-looking but dreary soap opera that begins to drag about half-way through. Garson is charming as usual as the woman who agrees to marry frigid Flynn, even though she doesn't love him. Pidgeon is once again paired with Garson, but he has a small role as the black sheep of the Forsyte family. Leigh is pretty and peppy. Young is not only too old to be playing Leigh's fiancé, but he's also miscast as a heartthrob. It's hard to believe that women would be fighting over someone who's so plain.

Notable is the absence of children. If this were real life, the hot Errol Flynn and the still fecund (albiet long-in-the-tooth) Greer Garson would have generated children. Is Flynn supposed to be gay? Who knows - he does pick out his wife's outfits and directs her attire, so that's pretty flouncy, but he plays the role super straight, so it is all a bit nutty.The movie's a 7 because of the costuming and the sheer lush absurdity of it all. Walter Pidgeon as an English artist? He's got this super-corporate mid-Atlantic American voice going - again, beyond lunacy.And of course, Janet Leigh - that wild, untamed mid-century Californian, as a stuffy late Victorian Brit? This movie doesn't work on so many levels that it becomes an animal house of conflicting cultures, accents (Harry Davenport - the archetypal midwesterner, plays the patriarch), and appearances (Robert Taylor would make a good grinch who stole Christmas), that it remains irresistible.I think every technicolor movie made in the 1940s is worth watching, so I have a natural bias here. Those of you with less liberal allowances may want to take a pass here, unless you have an insatiable appetite for watching Greer Garson (the reigning "Most Glorious Missus" (i.e, MGM)of the eponymous studio during this period) achieve the amazing combination of (1) suffering, while (2) being so above it all, which she again does very well here, and this time in technicolor.And if you buy into the Ivy League world view, you'll like the movie too: creative artists are the higher order, and the mercenary middle class (i.e., those of who don't have tenure and have to hustle for a living) is scum.Finally, don't come here for any insights into the human condition. Everyone is infantile here ~

This film was cited as one of the ones that Errol Flynn felt he gave a good performance in, and that assessment is certainly true. He completely played against type in this role as an emotionally restricted man of property and did a fine job. The problem is not in his playing but in the heavily edited screenplay and miscasting. Robert Young is laughable as the "young" architect and Greer Garson too genteel by half for the role of the scheming adulteress Irene who freezes Soames out-Eleanor Parker would have been ideal for this role,but one gets the feeling MGM couldn't allow Garson to be the adventuress the role demanded because of her image. Also,the film's lack of the pivotal rape scene that ends the marriage in the novel undermines the reason why Irene detests Soames so much. Flynn portrays Soames well enough that he could have followed through in such a scene in good form. He did a great job with this character's motivations and was still quite handsome. An underrated performance in a so-so adaptation of a classic novel.