Crush of the Week : Joan Fontaine

Joan Fontaine

With older sister, the delectable Olivia de Havilland

Atmospheric, gothic opening to the film

Joan is kind of a new movie obsession for me. I picked up a used copy of the autobiography called ' No Bed of Roses ' which delves into the prickly relationship she has always had with her older [ by a year ] sis, Livy. I'm guessing Olivia has the better rep of the two among buffs. With credits like ' Gone With The Wind ' on your resume it would be hard not to be a fave. Throw in all those buckles she swashed with bad boy Errol Flynn and she's a top contender for all-time favorite female. Plus she has two Oscars to poor Joanie's one. 

Whom ever one prefers, Joan is my crush of the week, if only for the two Hitchcock's in her canon: 1940's  'Rebecca'  and 1941's  'Suspicion '.  Both films get kind of the brush off by some Hitchcock enthusiast as not up to par with his later masterworks such as ' Rear Window ', ' Psycho ', and so forth, but ' Rebecca ' was a important film at the time it was made and a Best Picture Oscar winner to boot for Alfred, his first American film and the only Hitchcock movie to be so honored. Hard to believe today but the suspense thriller genre, that Hitchcock toiled in so prodigiously during his career, was considered a somewhat debased form of entertainment. Check out the top ten best lists of the 40's & 50's and one will find  nary a suspenser among them. Somewhat like today's movies, films from the classic period had to be about something to be taken seriously. Like the musical the thriller was considered just a piece of fluff, although unlike the musical not a highly polished one.

' Why don't you? '

Of course, ' Rebecca ' was anything but a debased film, even if it was a thriller it was a romantic one whose leading character is highly fragile and shy, but also beautiful and one that would appeal to the ladies of the day who not only comprised a large portion of the audience, but in most households decided which films the family would or would not see. One interesting aspect of the film is that Fontaine's character is never addressed by her first name. We are never told it. She is only referred to as Mrs. DeWinter, after her marriage to Laurence Olivier's somewhat remote, brooding Maxim. It turns out he has a lot to brood about as his first wife, who the film is named for and whose ghostly presence hangs over the film like a delicious fog , is dead and was possibly murdered. Not only that, Maxim may be the murderer. Then there is the evil Mrs. Danvers the head housekeeper, who was also the first Mrs. DeWinters' confidant. There is a subtle undercurrent of lesbianism between Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca. Whenever Danvers  speaks of Rebecca she goes into a strange type of trance, almost a controlled orgasm. One can see the bond between them was tight. Weather 1940 audiences pick up on this I cannot say, but modern critics have picked up and commented on it and it makes the film fascinating to watch. Fontaine, in her first major role, capture's her character to perfection. The mousey bookworm, who falls in love with a man who happens to be extraordinarily wealthy yet haunted, is suddenly in way over her head yet manages by films' end to overcome and master her fears.

Stylish on the outside in ' Suspicion '

' Suspicion ', made the following year, is on the surface almost a sequel with Joan playing a wallflower, bookish type [ she is reading a book in the first scene of the film ] who lives with her parents in the English countryside.Into her life comes Johnny Ayesgarth a slightly raffish, devil may care type played by Cary Grant. This was the first of four Hitchcock films Grant was to appear in, the other three being 1946's 'Notorious ' with Ingrid Bergman and the magnificent Claude Rains, 1955's  ' To Catch A Thief ' with Grace Kelly and 1959's  ' North By Northwest' with Eva Marie Saint and another one of Hitchcock's smooth suave villains, James Mason.

The mysterious glass of milk

This is a somewhat poor stepsister to 'Rebecca' in among us buffs. The reason goes is that the ending was compromise [ beware possible spoilers ahead ] with the Grant character not being a murderer after all, just some kind of ne'er do well, and that everything that had gone on before was all in the mind of Lina, the Fontaine character. Supposedly  audiences in 1941 couldn't accept Grant, a staple of the best screwball comedies of the 30's and 40's, as a villain. But there are two ways of looking at this movie. If Grant had been a murderer ' Suspicion' would have played out somewhat predictably, along the lines of so many women-in-danger sub-genre films that have been so popular with moviegoers through the years [ ' The Unguarded Moment ', ' The Reckless Moment ', ' The Accused ', ' Sleeping with the Enemy ' ]. By having all the suspicion going on in Lina's mind makes for a more interesting psychological thriller putting the character flaws not just with Grant for being such an irresponsible cad, but with Lina for not trying to understand her husband or at least communicating her fears and anxieties to him. Miscommunication is huge in this film, but it's not the kind one sees in comedies where if one person had told the other what had happened everything would be roses and sunshine. Hitchcock being Hitchcock and not Joel Schumacher there is always so much more going on. The theme of a man being wrongly accused is a favorite of the director's. From his early British masterwork 'The 39 Steps' to ' Saboteur ' to ' Strangers on a Train ' to ' I Confess ' to ' North by Northwest ', this wrongfully accused theme had it's ultimate exploration in 1957's ' The Wrong Man ' with Henry Fonda.

As for Joan, his critical rep lies mostly with this and the aforementioned ' Rebecca'. She was Oscar nominated for both and won for ' Suspicion '. One of the other nominees was sister Olivia. No wonder they cannot stand each other. On the right one more look at Joan, with Oscar. One other thing, if you haven't voted for this months poll, and you wish to, you can find it on the right side of this blog.