How the books compares to the movie

I've read it. One of my all time favorites. You're right, it's one of the best in the genre, and despite its meticulous historical research and vivid storytelling it is too often dismissed as a romance or "bodice ripper."

To answer your question: 138 minute movie, 1,000 page book...enough said. It's a nice little movie with swift pacing, golden age of Hollywood production values, the gorgeous Linda Darnel, and it's entertaining, but it's maybe ten percent of the novel or so. The well fleshed out research is all sacrificed to squeezing in as much of the (severely condensed) plot as possible. The production code and catholic legion of decency cut the poor thing to pieces, taking away all the punch of the story. It had the potential to be another Gone With The Wind, and the studio did everything it could to hype it up as such, but it just didn't take off...shame the money spent on publicity and the Studio manufactured "search for Amber" couldn't have gone to another two hours of footage and storyline to give it the epic scope it begged for.

The film is extremely bland compared to the book. it leaves out a lot, and of course sanitises everything.

As others have commented, the movie is sanitized, compared to the book. It leaves out three of Amber's marriages, her abortions, her other children, a lot of sex, and some prominent characters. Yet it's still entertaining, and well-cast. It would be naive to think they could get a 972-page novel into a two-hours-plus, censored movie without some cutting and alterations. The ideal medium would be a miniseries, but in today's DEI, LGBT-pandering climate, seeing it done properly would be very unlikely.