Tag: Joan Fontaine

Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948)

Lusciously filmed melodrama that might also be an exploration of dangerous obsession

Director: Max Ophüls

Cast: Joan Fontaine (Lisa Berndle), Louis Jourdan (Stefan Brand), Mady Christians (Frau Berndle), Marcel Journet (Johann Stauffer), Art Smith (John), Howard Freeman (Herr Kastner), Carol Yorke (Marie), John Good (Lt. Leopold von Kaltnegger)

Faded pianist and lothario Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan) plans to skip town in 1920s Vienna before his duel with a reputed crack-shot. He’s packed up and ready to go, but halts when his butler passes him a letter from a woman unknown to him that opens “By the time you read this letter, I may be dead”. The writer is Lisa Berndle (Joan Fontaine), a young woman who has loved Stefan since first seeing him when she was an impressionable 15-year-old living in his apartment block in 1900. All her life she has shadowed Stefan and twice they have met – once ten years before, spending a few romantic days together and then again recently under another name – but Stefan has no idea who she is.

Adapted from a Stefan Zweig short story, Letter From an Unknown Woman becomes a richly elaborate display of film-making from Max Ophüls, a show-case for his gorgeous camera work and luscious sense of visual theatre. This is classic melodrama, the characters thrown together after years apart by chance and contrivance, heightened emotions guiding every scene, with the suspense hook at all times of wondering who will see clearly first: will Stefan recognise this woman who has loved him from afar all his life, or will Lisa acknowledge that what she wants from Stefan, a full recognition and genuine return of her feelings, he is unable to give?

It makes for perfect material for Ophüls almost-unmatched visual sense. Letter From an Unknown Woman is packed with the sort of elaborate, carefully planned tracking shots and fluidic camera movements Ophüls made his own. From the start, the camera roves upwards, following the young Lisa as she excitedly runs up a spiral staircase to creep into the apartment of Stefan. There is a superbly handled tracking shot through the street of Venice, as a mid-twenties Lisa walks with a soldier would-be-suitor whose proposal she will immediately reject. And, most triumphantly of all, a tracking shot through a grand society theatre, that roams past crowds of hoi-polloi with Lisa, before focusing on her reaction as she glances Stefan from a distance across the hall.

It’s a visual richness Ophüls triumphs at and he uses it to give an intensity to several scenes, in particular the lost opportunity weekend Lisa spends with Stefan. This is marked by a beautifully framed late-night café dance, before a walk full of romantic lingering in a nearly-abandoned fairground. What’s superb about what Ophüls does with these sequences is to make them look romantic while also suggesting a sort of broken decadence to them (the locations, like the slightly faded café with its bored band, are always slightly past their best). There is a faded grandeur in Letter From an Unknown Woman, with everyone clinging to something they’ve lost or never had, hopes of love or artistic success that are never quite going to happen.

It’s easy to see Letter from an Unknown Woman as a traditional romance of the loyal loving woman, who sticks with her love for a man for better-or-worse. But, particularly today, it’s also clear that the film walks a fine line where its possible to see its lead character as both richly romantic and a delusional, obsessive border-line stalker, fixated on a heartless seducer. Is love a force to be praised at all times, or a destructive force that prevents someone from maturing? For all the richness of the photography and music, it’s hard not to think it’s the latter. And I think Ophüls lets this play on the edges, the camera lingering at points on Fontaine’s face full of obsessive self-sacrifice monomania.

It make for a richly complex role for Joan Fontaine, playing the young Lisa from age 15 to 35, taking her from doe-eyed, love-struck teenager to a woman seasoned by years of regrets, obsessively clinging to has last chance of finding a love she has spent her whole life pining for. Fontaine is giddy, excited but that glimmer of obsession is always there. Ophüls presents her at one point standing, stalker-like, outside Stefan’s apartment, her eyes craning up for just a glance of the object of her affection. In his presence, she’s breathless and excited but also with a touch of pain and desperation, longing for him to give her some sort of validation after years of dutiful, unremarked-on love. Fontaine manages to keep Lisa vulnerable and sympathetic, even as she goes about her life with an obsessive self-destruction, discarding other suitors, spending years working a menial role in a dress shop on the off-chance it might lead to an encounter with Stefan.

Self-destruction is what this ‘relationship’ brings to Lisa, a woman who stubbornly refuses to move on in her life from the decisions and emotions she first experiences as a teenager and will discard attentive lovers, husbands and even children all to the chance of finding a few moments of bliss with the object of her affection. She does this with a real sense of fragility, a longing that keeps her vulnerable, but also something that keeps her from really living her life. Particularly since Stefan – and the film uses Louis Jourdan’s cool, detached arrogance to great effect – emerges as a heartless roué, who thinks only of the immediate and destroys his own promise in a hedonistic clinging to the moment rather than really building something.

For all its luscious romance, Letter from an Unknown Woman carries this air of self-destructive futility about it. Is cradling a teenage obsession healthy for Lisa? Especially as its object is scarcely worthy of the effort? After all, Stefan meets and seduces (as he sees it) the same woman twice several years apart without ever joining the dots up in his head- repeating the same smooth pick-up lines both time. It doesn’t stop Lisa, until the very end, lighting up with a sort of youthful joy you imagine she’s not felt at any other time But Ophüls is using it to build towards a moment where Stefan may perhaps finally remember Lisa – and even more strikingly may realise the shallow emptiness of his whole life and the lost opportunity of being genuinely loved by someone.

That feeling exists, even if you feel (as I do) that Stefan is the unworthy figure of an emotionally-immature woman’s unhealthy obsession. Perhaps Lisa’s life would have been better and happier if she had moved on, as we all do, from our first crushes. But Letter from an Unknown Woman also celebrates a sort of strength in this, by contrasting the morally pure and consistent Lisa with the shallow and mercenary Stefan. His flaws are obvious but, in a way, they also serve to cement Lisa’s own innocence and vulnerability – and add to the impact as Stefan realises the path not taken.

Rebecca (1940)

Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier find married life isn’t a bed of roses in Rebecca

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Joan Fontaine (The second Mrs de Winter), Laurence Olivier (Maxim de Winter), Judith Anderson (Mrs Danvers), George Sanders (Jack Favell), Reginald Denny (Frank Crawley), Gladys Cooper (Beatrice Lacy), C. Aubrey Smith (Colonel Julyan), Nigel Bruce (Major Giles Lacy), Florence Bates (Mrs Edythe Van Hopper), Edward Fielding (Frith), Leo G. Carroll (Dr Baker)

It’s impossible to know what people are really thinking isn’t it? Rebecca is a film all about secrets and misconceptions, the biggest enigma of them all being that title character, the deceased wife casting a ghostly shadow over every scene. Adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s best-selling novel, Rebecca was Hitchcock’s first American picture and a masterclass in atmosphere with a vulnerable and deeply sympathetic lead, packaged into a wonderfully entertaining film combining the best of producer David O. Selznick’s sense for literary translation with Hitchcock’s filmic virtuosity.

On the French Riviera, a naïve young woman (Joan Fontaine), working as a paid companion for widower Mrs Van Hopper (Florence Bates), meets and becomes engaged to the aristocratic Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). Maxim is a widower, whose previous wife Rebecca drowned. Becoming the second Mrs de Winter, our heroine quickly finds herself out of her depth in Manderley, Maxim’s colossal country home. Every where she goes there are memories of Rebecca, her husband still seems to be in love with his first wife and the housekeeper Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson), still fanatically loyal to Rebecca, takes every opportunity to subtly remind the second Mrs de Winter of her own inadequacy. But is there a darker mystery behind the death of Rebecca?

Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning film (his only one, although he didn’t get the Director award) is a gothic delight. The action takes place in a mist-filled Cornwall, in a house where every nook and cranny has a dark secret. From its opening sequence, with the camera tracking through a fogbound forest before emerging in sight of a the intimidatingly grand Manderley, this is a film swimming in atmosphere and a dread of dark, psychological secrets, wrapped up in a dynamic melodrama.

At its heart is the vulnerable second Mrs de Winter – so timid we never even learn her name – beautifully embodied by Joan Fontaine. Nervous, awkward and shy, her hands often clasped together and shoulders (under a parade of unglamourous cardigans) tense, she rarely (if ever) looks comfortable. Fontaine’s wonderfully judged performance makes her bashful and deferential but also kind and guileless. Her polite eagerness to do the right thing and help people makes us warm to her instantly. And it’s impossible not to empathise with this gentle middle-class girl, parachuted into being the grand mistress of a huge house. Everyone seems to find her wanting – even Maxim’s decent sister (a droll performance by Gladys Cooper) good naturedly criticises everything from her lack of hobbies to poor dress sense.

That house would make anyone feel inadequate. Hitchcock frequently shoots Fontaine dwarfed by Manderley’s huge interiors, with its walls which seem to stretch on forever. She looks like a small frightened rabbit, as hopelessly oppressed by the building as she is bewildered by the procedures involved in running a house like this. Plus, there are all those reminders of Rebecca – everything seems to carry a monograph and not an item in the house seems to be without her personal touch. In many ways Rebecca is a ghost story without a ghost, where Rebecca’s presence (or lack of it) dominates the entire world of the film.

And our heroine (so uncertain of who she is, she tells a phone caller “I’m sorry Mrs de Winter has been dead for some time” before she suddenly remembers that is now her) won’t be allowed to escape that legacy. Not least because Mrs Danvers is there to remind her. In a superbly cold, calculating and chilling performance of barely repressed obsessiveness, Judith Anderson is outstanding as this housekeeper from your nightmares. Mrs Danvers is determined to turn Manderley into a mausoleum to her lost mistress – and ideally the new Mrs de Winter into a human sacrifice. Hitchcock manages to suggest more than a hint of sexual obsession into Mrs Danvers – she fondles with awe Rebecca’s negligee, drapes herself in Rebecca’s fur coats and remembers her with a breathless intensity. It’s an obsession that makes her subtly unbalanced and deeply dangerous.

Rebecca contains many of the themes that would run through Hitchcock’s work. Obsession obviously has a dark hold over Manderley, not least over Maxim who has the air of a man capable of violence. Unspoken, unknown crimes haunt over Manderley. The death of Rebecca is constantly bought back to us, not least with the film’s continual visual reference to crashing waves. The second Mrs de Winter feels isolated and watched at every turn, a stranger (and potential victim) in her own home. Several shots hammer home giddy, vertigo-inducing heights – from Maxim’s introduction on the cliffs, to the long drop from the heights of Manderley which Mrs Danvers urges a distraught Mrs de Winter to consider taking.

But what’s superb about Rebecca is that the reveals we expect to find are of course totally different to the reveals we get. A lot of this hinges on Olivier’s complicated and fascinating performance as Maxim. In many ways a man of total self-assurance – he barely breaks away from his breakfast to phone Mrs Van Hopper and inform her he will marry her companion – the more time we spend with him, the more his vulnerability, insecurity becomes clear, as does his patrician pride which leads to a self-damaging bluntness. When the secrets are revealed, its striking how this scion of the upper classes becomes suddenly lost – just as finally receiving some answers and reassurance turns Fontaine’s Mrs de Winter into someone more sure of herself than we have ever seen.

The film’s final act spools out a well-paced, intriguing courtroom drama, turned reversed murder-mystery. While some of the original novel’s developments are changed for code-related reasons (the usual provisos on crime and punishment), it makes very little impact on the compelling nature of the vice that seems to be trapping Maxim and his wife. Much of this is powered by George Sander’s superbly hissable turn as a preening playboy (and total shit), purring lines such as “I say marriage to Max is hardly a bed of roses is it?” with a near sadistic glee. It builds to a denouement straight out of horror, with Mrs Danvers taking rightful place as a demonic lord of misrule.

Rebecca was a product of the collaboration between Selznick and Hitchcock: two strong personalities who knew their own mind. Their relationship was fraught and troubled – they basically agreed on almost nothing – but the clash produced a work that stands as some of their best. Selznick demanded Hitchcock stick to the book – he had wanted to name the lead character ‘Daphne’, and introduce a running joke of sea sickness and a Jane Eyre-ish ‘mad woman in the attic’ – and in turn Hitchcock refused to film Selznick’s suggested flourishes (such as a smokey “R” filling the night sky for the final shot). Goes to show that conflict can produce great art.

Rebecca is an outstanding gothic melodrama, superbly acted (there is not a weak link in the cast) and brilliantly directed with a mist-filled flair and sense of heightened tension. A fascinating psychological puzzle while also being superbly gripping entertaining, it’s one of the finest Best Picture winning films of all time.

Suspicion (1941)

Is Cary Grant plotting to murder Joan Fontaine? Oh the Suspicion.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Cary Grant (Johnnie Aysgarth), Joan Fontaine (Lina Aysgarth), Nigel Bruce (Gordon Cochrane ‘Beaky’ Thwaite), Cedric Hardwicke (General McLaidlow), May Whitty (Martha McLaidlow), Isabel Jeans (Helen Newsham), Heather Angel (Ethel), Auriol Lee (Isabel Sedbusk), Leo G Carroll (Captain George Malbeck)

What do you do when you suddenly start to believe you might be living in a murder mystery? When you begin to think that the person you are married to might just be planning to dispatch you as well? That’s the big suspicion that haunts the mind of Lina Aysgarth (Joan Fontaine), a shy and meek heiress who has been charmed into marrying waster Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant), a lazy spendthrift and playboy. After they elope together, she quickly finds out that Johnnie has no work ethic or talent at all other than spending money. As real estate deals fall through, and Johnnie steals money from his employer to cover his debts, Lina starts to worry that her life insurance is looking more and more tempting to Johnnie.

Suspicion is a decent, middle-of-the-road Hitchcock thriller, which deals with familiar themes of doubt, dread and (of course) suspicion, but with Hitchcock very much in second gear. He’s not helped by the neutering of the source material. The original novel is very much a story of a woman who works out that her husband is definitely trying to kill her. The producers here, however, couldn’t abide the idea that CARY GRANT could be plotting to kill his wife. So the story is rejigged at the end to turn Lina into a silly, paranoid woman and Johnnie into, well yes a playboy, but also one who has been treated badly because of the suspicion thrown at him. This may have flown in 1941, but it’s impossibly sexist today. Plus it means the whole film basically builds towards – well – nothing.

Hitchcock throws in the odd decent flourish – most famously the carefully lit glass of milk that Johnnie carries up the stairs near the film’s end, which may or may not be poisoned. But far too often the story seems to be taking place in a fairytale England, of horses riding to hounds, country villages, Agatha Christie style authors dispensing accidental poisoning advice, and careful class structures. For all the odd moments of danger, the film is safe, contained and as unthreatening as it can get. But the rest is Hitch on autopilot, which feels at time as a remix of the director’s earlier Oscar winning film Rebecca.

That mood carries across to Joan Fontaine as well in the lead role. Fresh off working with Hitchcock on Rebecca, Fontaine essentially recreates the same role again here as the timid, shy, would-be dutiful wife who wants to see the best in a husband who in fact seems dangerous and unknowable. Fontaine won the Oscar for this film – but it feels as much like a compensation award for her previous defeat for Rebecca as it does for Suspicion. Really she does very little here that lifts the film, or stretches her as a performer from her previous role. It’s a retread, and while it’s a trick she does well, it’s a trick she has done before.

A far more challenging performance comes from Cary Grant, who uses the role as a clever meta-commentary on his own persona. Johnnie has all the charm and engaging bonhomie of Grant himself, but all subtly twisted with a selfish superficiality and wastrel greed. Grant walks a very fine line of a man who could be plotting to murder his wife or could just be a greedy chancer – and walks it very well indeed. You always see that Johnnie is bad news, while also understanding why Lina finds him so engaging. It’s a terrifically skilled performance, a lovely riff on Grant’s own screen persona, that shows he’s a far better actor than people often give him credit for – and you feel he is only too willing to embrace the chance to play a weak-willed, opportunistic murderer with little conscience (except of course it turns out he isn’t a murderer).

It’s a shame that nothing else in the film really rises to the occasion in the same way (although Nigel Bruce gives a very good performance as the gentle, ageing playboy Beaky). The film itself never really seems to be heading anywhere – it even takes a good two-thirds of its runtime before Lina begins to wake up to the fact that Johnnie is far from being the sort of husband women should dream of. It’s a bit slow, a bit too safe, and it largely lacks the element of danger. For the final few scenes, logic seems to evacuate the film as all the clues and hints we’ve had building towards us are shown to be – nothing more than red herrings and the inferences of a silly woman. Because, after all, CARY GRANT can’t be a murderer can he? No matter what he wants.

Ivanhoe (1952)

Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor (no relation) fighting for Good Old England

Director: Richard Thorpe

Cast: Robert Taylor (Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe), Elizabeth Taylor (Rebecca), Joan Fontaine (Rowena), George Sanders (Sir Brian De Bois-Guilbert), Guy Rolfe (Prince John), Emlyn Williams (Wamba), Robert Douglas (Sir Hugh De Bracy), Finlay Currie (Sir Cedric of Ivanhoe), Felix Aylmer (Isaac of York), Norman Wooland (King Richard), Basil Sydney (Waldemar Fitzurse), Harold Warrender (Robin Hood)

Adapted (very loosely) from Sir Walter Scott’s novel, Ivanhoe was another instalment in Hollywood’s battle to drag people away from their new-fangled TV sets. This rivalry meant technicolour spectacles like this were the most valued animals in a studio’s stable, which probably explains why Ivanhoe was the MGM film nominated for Best Picture in 1952, while The Bad and the Beautiful (which set a record for most Oscar wins for a film not nominated for Best Picture) and, almost unbelievably, Singin’ In the Rain were overlooked.

Noble knight Ivanhoe (Robert Taylor) finds Richard the Lionheart (Norman Wooland) locked up in Austria. Returning to England, he looks to raise funds to rescue the King – mostly by putting the gentle squeeze on Jewish banker Isaac of York (Felix Aylmer) while flirting with his daughter Rebecca (Elizabeth Taylor). He must also reconcile with his father (Finlay Currie) and his sweetheart Rowena (Joan Fontaine), and prevent wicked Prince John (Guy Rolfe) and his sidekick Sir Brian (George Sanders) from taking control of the Kingdom.

Bless, this film looks quite dated now. The bright primary colours of the costumes are endearingly sweet, with our heroes dressed in capes and tights with all the delight of primary school children in a play. You need to tune into its simplicity – failing to do so means you’ll struggle to watch the final battle scenes as characters go toe-to-toe with all-too-obviously bouncy rubber swords (at one point, a sword literally bends and snaps back into place after a strong blow). The film is crammed with fights, jousts, sieges and battles – there is precious little room for plot, dialogue or character, but at least you get a maelstrom of action (even if it rarely makes much sense).

At the centre of it all is Robert Taylor as Ivanhoe. As in his other roles, Taylor is as stiff and lifeless as a board, while his transatlantic vowels clang with even more painful obviousness amongst the cut-glass and ‘ever-so-’umble’ accents from the cast of jobbing British actors. Taylor squares his jaw and does his best with the derring-do – although, as per usual, he makes Ivanhoe such a dull person, you can hardly raise the slightest interest in him. Inexplicably every woman in the film (i.e. both of them) are head-over-heels in love with him.

But then all the heroes in this film are stick-in-the-muds. Harold Warrender is the most arrogant, least fun Robin Hood you’ll ever see. Finlay Currie gives swagger as Ivanhoe’s father, but is basically a pompous windbag. Emlyn Williams as comic relief “Wampa” is so tiresome you’ll breathe a sigh of relief when he burns to death in a fire. Joan Fontaine is so saintly opposite the balsawood Taylor that you find it unlikely that we will ever hear the pitter-patter of little Ivanhoes.

The bright spots are the villains. Guy Rolfe has huge fun as a moustachio-twirling, scheming Prince John. George Sanders gets the most out of Ivanhoe’s rival Sir Brian (can you think of any other film with a villain called Brian?), although the part (and the film) is far beneath him.

Brian is of course infatuated with the Jewish Rebecca (played with a radiant charisma by a very young Elizabeth Taylor). If the film has any claim to being a more than just a gaudy knight’s tale, it’s in its treatment of its Jewish characters and careful exploration of anti-Semitism in medieval England. Taylor and Felix Aylmer (as her father) give sensitive performances as put-upon, civilised people, ill-used by those around them and expected to lend support at the drop of a hat. Ivanhoe’s assumptions that they (a) have tonnes of money and (b) will feel duty-bound to help Richard are met with a quiet regret and a pointed comment that Richard’s own anti-Semitism track-record is hardly that good. Later Rebecca is placed on trial, her Jewishness central to accusations of sorcery. Persecution is an underlying theme of the film – and although it ends with all right as rain, the threat of it throughout much of the action makes the film feel more substantial than it is.

The main problem is it’s not made with any inspiration. Thorpe is a mediocre director, and the editing flashes through some parts of the story almost too fast to follow what’s happening. The ending suffers in particular from this economy: suddenly we cut from Brian and Ivanhoe fighting to the death, to Richard arriving with an army of knights, Brian being killed largely off-camera, a quick dying speech from him, then Richard announcing everything is fine in the kingdom. It’s all so sudden, it feels like they just ran out of film so needed to wrap it up quickly.

Still, Ivanhoe is fairly good fun despite all of this. It doesn’t require any concentration – and is hardly a minor-classic, let alone any other form of classic – and it has some truly hit-and-miss performing, but it barrels along ago. It may be workmanlike in the extreme, but its bright primary colours mean there’s always something to look at.