Quote of the Day: Mad about the boy

 

A riverside glade in the moonlight.

A romantic clinch, between Joan Fontaine (posh English wife) and Arturo de Cordova (saucy French pirate).

A very lush arrangement of Clair de Lune on the soundtrack.

Arturo: “If only you were a boy!”

FRENCHMAN’S CREEK (1944)

Script by Talbot Jennings from Daphne DuMaurier’s novel.

Directed by Mitchell Leisen.

(Arturo explains that if Joan were a boy she could come to sea with him, so she drags up and joins him on his white and gold pirate ship where the sailors rob the English, steal lots of women’s dresses and put them on, and kiss each other.)

David Chierichetti: “I feel that in FRENCHMAN’S CREEK you were so involved with the visual aspects of the color, the costumes and the sets, that you lost sight of the story values.”

Mitchell Leisen: “You tell me what the story values were in FRENCHMAN’S CREEK and I’ll answer that. She falls in love with a pirate, leaves her husband then comes back in time not to get caught. That’s all. It’s as dull as dishwater and it’s a lousy picture.”

It catches real fire in ONE SCENE — where Joan Fontaine has to defend herself against Basil Rathbone’s dastardly Lord Rockingham without any prospect of rescue. It’s pretty unusual to see a leading lady have to handle the bad guy all by herself, and the outcome is both convincing, grisy, and a touch camp (flattening Basil with a suit of armour is always going to seem SLIGHTLY hysterical).

The whole film, lacking in dramatic tension to a quite baffling degree, is half-rescued by its startling gayness: it’s as close to being actually OUT as it can get without taking that crucial extra step, impossible at the time, of actually BEING out.