Film Review--Daisy Kenyon (1947)

Over the years, I’ve become a bigger and bigger fan of Henry Fonda and Joan Crawford. When I first started watching a lot of older films, I avoided those with bigger stars of the day because, without having any experience with them of my own, I was easily taken in by the established personas and believed them entirely. I was a big fan of Humphrey Bogart, despite obvious acting flaws, but wouldn’t watch something with Jimmy Stewart. It all came down to my acceptance of their particular personas.

In the case of Fonda, my eyes were opened by Once upon a Time in the West, where his Frank throws the good guy image I had out the window. At the time, I understood that this role was the first villain he had played. On a scale of purely evil characters, this may be true but, the more films with him that I watch, the more I see conflict, both light and dark, in the characters he plays. Sure, there are still a lot of Tin Stars out there, but the range of characters was far more varied than I’d ever given him credit for.

Crawford’s case is different, but more important. I avoided her films because she has been presented my whole life, since the publication of Mommy Dearest, as a real life monster that should be avoided at all cost. Because of how she has been accused of treating her children, and it is deplorable, this now comes first with her actual onscreen work virtually forgotten. I know few people my age who are fans of her work, but nearly everyone knows her cruel persona. I can’t help but look at her myself through this filter, but the more I see of her work, starting in Tod Browning’s 1929 lurid classic The Unknown, the more her strength and talent overshadows whatever she may have done in her life. This comes most clear to me watching her 1947 vehicle, directed by Otto Preminger and adapted from a novel by Elizabeth Janeway, Daisy Kenyon.

Although the DVD is under the banner of “Fox Film Noir,” it’s not a genre film in any way. The only reason to call it so is its high contrast black and white photography, but that’s not a very good reason. Regardless, it is a pretty simple romantic triangle story about a commercial artist (Crawford) involved with a married lawyer (Dana Andrews) at the same time as an ex-soldier (Fonda) in the years just after WWII. She is strong, successful, and the center of the picture, with the handsome leading men competing for her affections. The world that revolves around her is definitely not a Noir world.

Joan Crawford can certainly drive a picture, and she does some great work here. She was in her forties at this point and the part was written for someone fifteen years younger (a rarity then and now). This gets hidden in superficial ways: the aforementioned darkly lit photography and the wardrobe department made heavy use of their lacey collar drawer, but it’s the strength of her performance that really makes her age irrelevant. Both leading men are conflicted and Preminger does really well keeping their motives secret until the end. Andrews, self-aggrandizing and actively aggressive, plays against Fonda and his passive-aggressive strategies very well. They are equals working against each other, while becoming friends, toward the same goal.

But it’s the details in the characters and the issues that Preminger dealt with that make the film work so well. Fonda clearly has PTSD, half a century before it was so-called. Haunted by dreams of the war and scarred in his every day life, Fonda seems as downright crazy as I’ve ever seen him. Andrews’ character has a big case defending a Japanese-American whose land had been stolen while he was interned in the camps. The still hot anti-Asian sentiment at the time of the film is directly dealt with, and is a surprising touch that does not come from the original text (in the novel, apparently, he is working on some big military spending project). There is a distinct homoerotic subtext and, with undercurrents of child abuse and divorce, Daisy Kenyon hits on a lot of taboos for 1947 and is considerably more progressive than I would have expected.

By all reports, everyone involved in the production were lukewarm to negative about the finished product. The film was afterward forgotten, and this is its first ever home release. I may disagree with the film’s misclassification, but at least its available.