Joan Fontaine films on TCM: Alfred Hitchcock’s one and only Oscar winner
Joan Fontaine, who turned 94 last Oct. 22, shines on Turner Classic Movies’ tonight. TCM will be showing five Fontaine films: Jane Eyre (1944), The Constant Nymph (1943), Born to Be Bad (1950), Suspicion (1941), and Ivanhoe (1952).
I’ve yet to check out The Constant Nymph, which had been unavailable for decades until TCM presented it a few months ago. In the film, 26-year-old Fontaine plays a 14-year-old infatuated with a composer (Charles Boyer) married to her older cousin (Alexis Smith). Edmund Goulding directed. Enough members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences must have found Fontaine quite believable as a lovestruck teen, for The Constant Nymph earned her her third (and final) Best Actress nomination.
Jane Eyre has been made and remade about a zillion times in the last century or so. Fontaine’s version, directed by Robert Stevenson (later of Mary Poppins fame) and costarring Orson Welles as Rochester, used to be the most famous one. (At least for the time being, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s well-received 2011 version starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender has become “the most famous” Jane Eyre movie.) Unfortunately, despite veteran George Barnes’ moody cinematography, Stevenson’s version isn’t nearly as involving as Charlotte Brontë’s novel.
Fontaine is okay in the title role, but her heart doesn’t seem to be totally in the part. Worse yet, Welles’ Rochester comes across as more creepy than brooding. It’s too bad that Michael Fassbender wasn’t around in the mid-’40s; he’d have been a much more adequate Rochester/Fontaine match. Aldous Huxley, by the way, was one of the film’s credited screenwriters.
Highly recommended is Richard Thorpe’s Ivanhoe, perhaps the best (along with Michael Curtiz and William Keighley’s The Adventures of Robin Hood) of the medieval adventure tales made in Hollywood. Most of the cast is in top form, particularly Fontaine – not at all like her past sweet English roses – Finlay Currie, and the film’s star, Robert Taylor. Elizabeth Taylor looks pretty in costume, but the film truly belongs to those around her.
Suspicion is considered a minor Alfred Hitchcock effort, partly because of its tacked-on, unconvincing happy ending. Fontaine is fine as her second mousy Hitchcock heroine afraid of her husband (in this case, Cary Grant), going on to win the Best Actress Oscar of 1941 for her efforts – which many felt was a belated recognition for her “I” de Winter in Rebecca the previous year. (Laurence Olivier was the “menacing” husband in that one.) I should add that among 1941’s Academy Award losers was Fontaine’s not-at-all-happy older sister, Olivia de Havilland, in the running for Mitchell Leisen’s melodrama Hold Back the Dawn.
Born to Be Bad has sweet and lovely Fontaine wreaking havoc on the lives of those around her. It’s a fine performance, and it’s too bad Fontaine wasn’t given more roles like that in her career. In fact, it’s fascinating to watch an actress known for her shy, tender, passionate characters (Rebecca, Suspicion, Jane Eyre, From This Day Forward, Letter from an Unknown Woman) be just as believable as a nasty, calculating, evil bitch. Fontaine gets solid support from Robert Ryan, Zachary Scott, and the underrated and underused Joan Leslie. Nicholas Ray directed.
Joan Fontaine films on TCM: Primetime/late night schedule (EST)
8:00 PM JANE EYRE (1944)
Director: Robert Stevenson.
Cast: Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Margaret O’Brien, Peggy Ann Garner, John Sutton, Sara Allgood, Henry Daniell, Agnes Moorehead, Aubrey Mather, Edith Barrett, Barbara Everest, Hillary Brooke, Ethel Griffies, Eily Malyon, Ivan Simpson, Erskine Sanford, John Abbott, Elizabeth Taylor, Mae Marsh, Mary Forbes.
96m10:00 PM THE CONSTANT NYMPH (1943)
Director: Edmund Goulding.
Cast: Charles Boyer, Joan Fontaine, Alexis Smith, Brenda Marshall, Charles Coburn, Dame May Whitty, Peter Lorre, Joyce Reynolds, Jean Muir, Montagu Love, Eduardo Ciannelli.
112m12:00 AM BORN TO BE BAD (1950)
Director: Nicholas Ray.
Cast: Joan Fontaine, Robert Ryan, Zachary Scott, Joan Leslie, Mel Ferrer, Harold Vermilyea, Virginia Farmer, Kathleen Howard.
90m2:00 AM SUSPICION (1941)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Cast: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Isabel Jeans, Heather Angel, Leo G. Carroll, Auriol Lee, Reginald Sheffield, Gavin Gordon.
100m4:00 AM IVANHOE (1952)
Director: Richard Thorpe.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Finlay Currie, Emlyn Williams, Robert Douglas, Felix Aylmer, Francis de Wolff, Norman Wooland, Basil Sydney, Harold Warrender, Patrick Holt, Sebastian Cabot, Megs Jenkins, Valentine Dyall, Guy Rolfe.
107m
“Joan Fontaine Films on TCM” notes
Joan Fontaine Suspicion image: RKO Pictures.