1h 52min | Drama, Music, Romance | 23 June 1943
Director: Edmund Goulding
Stars: Charles Boyer, Joan Fontaine, Alexis Smith
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035751/
I don't understand why I would have rated this 7 in Feb 2014. I was on the jury then, perhaps that was a factor. I'll leave it as a 7-, and see if a future viewing will alter the number.
I like the music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, composer of the opera Die Tote Stadt (the dead city). I like the exploration of atonal dissonance versus melody.
I like most of JF's (1917-2013) Oscar-nom'd performance. When we first meet her at her ramshackle chateau, she's supposed to be a teenager, and she uses exuberant physicality and unkempt hair/clothes to convey it. When she appears later in a schoolgirl uniform (coat & hat) and calmer, she is much less convincing.
AS (b. 1921) is convincing as the cold stiff British aristocrat, older cousin to JF. I'm not sure why she decided to marry CB, but I believe her jealousy over JF.
CB (b. 1899, does share some facial structure with Zero Mostel, who imitates him in Du Barry Was a Lady (1943)) is not convincing as the composer who needs emotional seasoning (according to JF's father). And he doesn't really get the wrenching emotion until after his masterpiece is performed.
I can understand how a schoolgirl could have a crush on CB, and JF doesn't mature beyond that age. But for CB to realize he reciprocates that worship is an early rendition of Lolita ('62). One reviewer says the novel takes the relationship to the sexual level. Gghhh.
So what is portrayed as tragic romantic destiny here, is just psychological sickness to me. Hence my rejection of 7. Today I'd give it a flat 6.
Warner, dir. Goulding; 7-
