Blanche Fury

Is Marc Allegret a director?Or does he simply(but smartly) use others' talents?His most memorable pre-war movies are not really his.For instance ,"Fanny" owes everything to its actor,Raimu,and its writer,Marcel Pagnol:it is actually a Pagnol movie.Ditto "Entrée des Artistes" which is remarkable by Henri Jeanson's lines ("I wear my Légion d'honneur to impress the fool" ) and Louis Jouvet's acting genius.

A short English period occurred just after the war -when he other French directors such as Renoir and Duvivier worked abroad during the war.Which leads us to "Blanche Fury".This movie is par excellence an effort in which Allégret uses the others' skills.Objections remain:an arguable editing ,too much ellipse (the relationship Lawrence/Blanche is botched,and the pace is often too fast and hasty :again the Blanche /Thorn love affair is believable only because of the actors' splendid performances).

And the screenplay,however ,is wonderful:snatches of lady Chatterley,Jane Eyre ,the turn of the screw,My cousin Rachel,Wuthering Heights and more come to mind.Even Vincente Minelli's "home from the hill"(1960)!This is a romantic story par excellence. Heredity and fatality play a prominent part is this story of silence and fury:Thorn (a great Stewart Granger) is a bastard,but Blanche( a majestic Valerie Hobson) is akin to him,because,at the beginning of the movie,she's a governess,and only marriage can provide her with a place in the sun;but her husband is probably impotent :here the writers use a metaphor.his father wants him to show his authority over their valuable property,that is to say to be a man.At the beginning of the movie,Blanche is a go-getter,but as soon as she meets Thorn,her fate is sealed,she reacts to events ,she no longer initiates them.Ultimately,she will try to stop the impending disaster ,but what she does finally backfires on herself and turns it into a final Thorn victory.Thorn is much more complex than he appears at first sight:actually he should own the property and he sees the Fury family as impostors;his attitude with animals makes us side with him for a while.Then,when he's about to win,he treats the servants as his predecessors used to do,and we discover his love for Blanche takes a back seat to his love for the domain.Then the lovers' fate is sealed.

Color treatments are visually astounding :when we go from Blanche's deathbed to a flashback at the beginning,then the final pictures,hellish glimmering red glow ;Blanche's arrival in the castle,in a snowed up,misty landscape;the barns fire ,which seems to set ablaze the darkest night.

Afterwards,Allégret's career straightly goes downhill."L'amant de Lady Chatterley" which I haven't seen but which he may have intended as "Blanche Fury II" ,poor Brigitte Bardot's vehicles ("en effeuillant la marguerite') or abysmal works(a segment of the horrible made up of sketches movie "les Parisiennes") .His brother Yves was much better ("Manèges" "Dédée d'Anvers" "une si jolie petite plage" "les Orgueilleux").

"Blanche Fury" deserves to be seen anyway.

The film is one I only saw partially once, two or three years ago. I wish it was on Video or DVD. Other early Stewart Granger historic films are out - SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS and CAPTAIN BOYCOTT. This one was based on a novel by Joseph Shearing, the female novelist who used a male pseudonym. All her books were based on actual crimes - see my comments on the contermporary film SO EVIL MY LOVE, with Ray Milland and Ann Todd. Here, Shearing turns to the murder, at Stanfield Hall, near Norwich, England of Isaac Jermy and his son (incredibly named Isaac Jermy Jermy)in November 1848. The perpetrator was a farmer, James Blomfield Rush, who was a tenant of the Jermys but was on bad terms with them for a series of debts he owed them, and attempts to claim title to the farm and other properties. Complicating the matter was that the Jermys title to their estate was subject to a law suit. Rush dressed in a disguise, and walked over two miles in the dark to the estate, where he shot the Jermys down in their home, and then shot the wife of the son and their maid. Apparently he wanted no witnesses. Unfortunately there were too many. Also, his alibi was supposed to be his children's governess, Emily Sandford, and she turned out to be more truthful at his trial than he hoped. The trial was notable because Rush insisted in defending himself. It turned out that he had a fool for a client. Rush was found guilty and hanged. The full story is not quite used in the movie, but bits and parts of it certainly are.

"Blanche Fury" is one of those films that is rarely aired on TV, impossible to find on video, and OUGHT to be released to DVD for magnificent production values, use of color, and all out dripping-with-Gothic eeriness. The leads are compelling (Valerie Hobson and Stewart Granger at both their primes). This is also one of those rare opportunities to see Michael Gough doing what he does best; behaving thoroughly despicably! (unfortunately, Gough is familiar to contemporary audiences pretty much only as Alfred the butler from the "Batman" films of the 90's, which is rather a crime since he's most proficient playing cads and sinister megalomaniacs).

Watching "Blanche Fury" is like diving head first into a Victorian Gothic romance novel, and is pulled off with style and panache in every sense. It's a film for revival houses, ripe for restoration and preservation on DVD/VHS, and would surely find an audience in today's society which seems pretty much preoccupied with escapism. Escape into the world of "Blanche Fury" and you might not want to resurface (yes, it's that good).

The 18th century costumes, manor-house setting, and forbidden romance make this look like a bodice-ripper to the idle channel-flipper, but it's not. It's a twisted and effective suspense movie in a period setting, more like "Dangerous Liaisons" than Harlequin books. It's about a beautiful and willful young woman (Valerie Hobson) who doesn't like her rich clod of a husband, instead she has the hots for poor-but-gorgeous estate manager Stewart Granger. At first it's all forbidden kisses and steamy dialogue... until they kill her husband. Then, things start to get real, and get creepy. It's easy to get excited over forbidden fruit that looks like Stewart Granger, but a whole lot harder to deal with a murderer who wants to marry you for reasons that have nothing to do with romance. Especially when it's impossible to refuse him because you're an accessory to murder, even after he...(sorry, no spoilers). It's rather like Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" or "Dangerous Liaisons", in which a well-to-do, polite exterior conceals a man and woman whose love has turned deadly. When I first saw this movie I was astonished at how good it was, and wondered why I'd never heard of it. It isn't a classic like "Kind Hearts and Coronets", but it sure grabbed me when I flipped across it. Between the solid performances by Hobson and Granger, the lush Technicolor photography, the steamy romance, and the creepy ending, this is one to look for. (I don't believe it's out on video, but is occasionally shown on AMC

A classic example of a very well-made historical drama of the late 1940's. In every respect it is faultless, given the constraints of time and the story compression inherent in all movie making. There are simply no movie actors or actresses today who could play the star roles with the same enormous presence, dignity, grace, self-assurance, and acting skill manifested by the superb and striking Hobson and Granger---not to mention their precise and exemplary articulation of the English language. These were manifestly adults, not today's mumbling urchins posing as adults. Photography, production values, and historical accuracy are beyond praise. This was Valerie Hobson's personal favorite of her film performances.