My Forbidden Past (1951)

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Robert Mitchum and Ava Gardner make for handsome leads in this drama, but both seem out of place in this costume drama set a post-Civil War New Orleans. Gardner is spurned by Mitchum, but when she suddenly comes into wealth, she decides to use her money to win back Mitchum and exact her revenge. Mitchum is one of my favorite actors, but this is not his sort of picture. Gardner too for that matter. The leads make this film worth watching, but just barely.

This film stars Ava Gardner, Robert Mitchum and Melvyn Douglas, so you'd certainly expect this to be a very good movie. Well, if that is the case, you'd be dead wrong. That's because no matter the talents of these folks, you can't overcome a terrible script...and the one for "My Forbidden Past" is pretty bad.The film begins with Mitchum and Gardner preparing to run off to sea to be with each other. However, her family interferes and she never receives a letter from him saying he will return for her. And, since their paths don't cross for some time, when they do meet again, Mitchum is married! And, Gardner is intent on some bizarre sort of revenge--as well as to break up this marriage and have him for herself.The biggest problem about the film is that it never is believable and the story is awfully hard to believe--and overly complicated. The bad dialog doesn't help, either. It's very hard to believe that they were able to hook good actors into being in this film--but somehow they did. Was it the money or did they hold various loved ones prisoner to force the actors to be in this bilge? I have no idea....all I know is that the film is pretty bad.

My Forbidden Past has Ava Gardner as decadent New Orleans belle living with her great aunt Lucile Watson and her cousin Melvyn Douglas. She's got a yen for Yankee doctor Robert Mitchum who is doing research over at Tulane University. They break things off and Mitchum goes away and returns with a bride, slatternly Janis Carter.In the meantime Ava inherits a whole bunch of money from her grandmother who left New Orleans years ago under a cloud. Just what she did is never revealed, but her name is spoken in hushed tones. Whatever she did, she sure got rich at it.It kind of reminds me of The Road to Rio where we never do find out what those papers were that foiled the dastardly schemes of Gale Sondergaard to marry off Dorothy Lamour. As Bing concludes about the "papers" the world must never know.This film was conceived so that Howard Hughes who was crushing out on Ava Gardner big time at that point could get her over to RKO. He paid Louis B. Mayer's price and Mayer apparently threw in Melvyn Douglas.Melvyn Douglas knows full well what a clinker this is so he overacts outrageously in the best Snidely Whiplash tradition of screen villains. He's the best one in the film.My Forbidden Past should come with a warning label that if you manage to sit through this melodrama because you want to find out just what Ava's forbidden past was with grandma, you will be left hanging.

I enjoyed watching the web of intrigue unfold as a young New Orleans lady in the late 1800's attempts to use her inheritance to regain the man she loves. But there are others who are and have been plotting both for and against her, and her plans go awry. I eagerly watched to learn if the man she loved would suffer for her machinations, or if she would risk her societal position to save him. Unfortunately the ending left me cold, with too many questions left unanswered and with the feeling that Robert Mitchum was miscast in the role of the doctor she loves.