Tessa, la nymphe au coeur fidèle

TCM recently managed to clear the rights of this film from the literary executors of Basil Dean (who coauthored the play version) and Margaret Kennedy (who authored the novel and play adaptation). The television premiere was on TCM on September 28, 2011. The original 1924 novel has been reprinted in paperback but I have not read it yet.

It seems that the 1943 Hollywood adaptation cleans most of the sex out of the story which was dealt with in the novel. Also the book focuses on the entire Sanger family while the film (and play) focuses on the central triangle of Tessa, Lewis Dodd and Florence. I think that Boyer and Fontaine are somewhat miscast as Tessa and Dodd though both perform excellently. It seems that in the novel the pair become lovers though Tessa is underage and they actually do escape together to Brussels. Also, the sister Toni Sanger already has had a sexual affair with Birnbaum, played in the movie by Peter Lorre as Fritz Bercovy. In the film both affairs remain chaste - at least until Toni Sanger is safely married to the Birnbaum/Bercovy character.

In the film, the pedophilia issue is dodged by having Dodd and Tessa realize and acknowledge they are lovers/soul mates without any form of consummation - even kissing. Their love is idealized and unrealizable on this earth. One love scene that was probably played for real in the book or play is done as a "dream vision" by Tessa while she listen's to Dodd's symphony on the radio.

Fontaine is too old but shows a remarkable lack of vanity - wearing no makeup and using an awkward, hyperactive physicality to suggest an adolescent girl. Boyer comes off as too much the mature European roué - Robert Donat, Errol Flynn and Leslie Howard were all considered for the part. Not enough is made of Lewis' social nonconformity - in the book he is also the son of wealth who repudiates his class and its values. Alexis Smith as Florence, the unhappy excluded wife comes off best in some ways - her character has a genuine conflict going on and is proactive. Smith as another poster mentioned is simultaneously hateful, understandable and pitiful and she fights for a relationship that is essentially doomed. Florence's attraction to bohemian artistic types is in conflict with her basic inability to sympathize with their lifestyles and values. This conflict is truthfully captured by Smith and Goulding.

The studio sets in the Austrian Tyrol scenes look like a mix of Kentucky farm and English moors and are not convincing. There is a genuine sophistication here but without the characters taking that final fatal step into the forbidden, some of the guts of the story is lost. The previous two adaptation of the book - a 1928 silent with Ivor Novello and Mabel Poulton (preserved by the BFI) and an unavailable or lost 1934 remake with Victoria Hopper and Brian Aherne evidently hewed closer to the novel.

Joan Fontaine has became one of my very favorite actresses, just like her sister Olivia de Havilland, after seeing her in such Classics as "Rebecca", "Suspicion", "Jane Eyre" and that masterpiece, "Letter from an Unknown Woman". That mesmerizing constantly-frightened-insecure-frail look of hers has totally bewitched me; her classic features surrounded by an ethereal aura; her distinction and class, even in waif-like roles like the one she plays here and in "Letter…".

This film, just as "Letter from an Unknown Woman" is about Love, sometimes unrequited but always "intense". Young Tessa Sanger (Joan Fontaine) is deeply in love with much elder composer Lewis Dodd (Charles Boyer), who hasn't been able to succeed as musician. Tessa's father (another musician) played by Montagu Love, says that Lewis will have to love and suffer because of it, to attain an achievement as a composer.

The wondrous music by masterful German composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold is a marvel, pure poetry, which sets the perfect mood for this melancholic Love Story; it was really a privilege for Warner Brothers Pictures to have had the fortune of counting him as one of the members of its staff; Korngold's music is an awesome contribution to the Motion Pictures.

As I said before Joan Fontaine's perfect as the young Tessa. She was something like 26 years old when this movie was filmed and she portrays convincingly and believably the love-stricken teenager. Boyer is good as the intense composer and plays sensitively his scenes with Fontaine. Kudos too for Alexis Smith, who plays Florence, Tessa's elder cousin with great skill and sentiment.

Others in the magnificent cast are Charles Coburn as Tessa's lovable uncle, Brenda Marshall as Tessa's sister, Dame May Witty as a Dowager British Aristocrat, Peter Lorre as a friend of the Sanger family, Eduardo Ciannelli as Roberto, a faithful servant of the Sanger family, Jean Muir, etc.

Again, it's a shame that this wonderful, utterly moving film is out of circulation due to legal issues, if they didn't exist it should belong to TCM's Library (just like "Letty Lynton").

I know a lot of folks like this film. I am not saying they're at all wrong...it just didn't work for me. Much of this was because the relationship between Albert and Tessa was just a bit creepy to me...and wasn't always convincing.

When the film begins, Albert (Charles Boyer) is a struggling composer. And, when he goes to visit an old friend and his children, the old man dies...leaving the daughters to stay with their grandfather. But Albert decides to spend more time with them...sort of like a godfather. The problem is that 14 year-old Tessa (Joan Fontaine) is smitten with him and longs to become his lover one day. This is when it got a tad creepy for me. Fortunately, Albert didn't reciprocate. However, after Albert marries, his marriage is a bit rocky...and all the while Tessa is watching him...longingly.

My other problem with this very slickly made film is that I hate the idea of actresses in their mid-20s playing 14 year-olds. This rarely works well and I think an 18, 19 year-old could have pulled it off better. Mind you, Fontaine isn't bad (except when she occasionally stares off into space...something that she did here and in "Rebecca"...and I have no idea why)...in fact she's MUCH more convincing than Ginger Rogers in "The Major and the Minor"...a film than many love but which I think is among Billy Wilder's worst movies because of this.

So, overall you have a very slick love story that many folks love...but I didn't. I didn't hate it...but that's hardly a glowing endorsement. Plus what do I know? The Academy thought Fontaine was just fine....

I saw this film on television when I was in my early teens but unfortunately, due to legal problems over the screenplay rights, it cannot be shown on television or released to video at this time. I have collected several recordings of Korngold's beautiful score including a moving performance of his Tone Poem "Tomorrow". The film's star, Joan Fontaine, has said this is, along with "Letter From An Unknown Woman" (1948) her favorite among her films. Fortunately the film is safeguarded in the Turner vaults and hopefully they will be able to bring this truly wonderful movie back into the public eye in the near future.

What a disappointment! A great cast miscast. Shades of Lolita! Better the title should be "The Cloying Nymphet". Ordinarily I like Joan Fontaine, but at 26 she was too manufactured as a 14 year old. Certain poses she would strike were appropriate and in keeping with the age of the character but only certain and only a few at that. I don't know the novel so I can't compare. But in the movie, all she needed was a piece of straw dangling from her mouth and she could have been a consumptive flat-chested Jane Russell beckoning Boyer - an easy 20 years older - in the person of a dense lech to come away from his piano and jump in the hay with her. He, too, is a favorite, but there was something repelling about the 2 of them in action with one another. Alexis Smith, as her older (although she was 4 years younger) cousin who is married to Boyer's lech, stole whatever scenes she was in, dupe that she was. Peter Lorre, a floating in and out presence who had nothing to add and added plenty of it. I kept waiting for - and hoping that - Eduardo Ciannelli as a butler (!!!) no less, to pull out a gun and say stick 'em up. Charles Coburn, again another masterful actor, got lost in the scenery. Dame May Witty was the most fun in her great Dame manner. And finally, the Tyrolean background was obviously the Warner Bros. backlot on a bad day. Out of circulation for 70 years, I'd always been curious about it, especially for the assemblage of actors. Curiosity killed this cat.