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Daisy Kenyon (1947) is a rarity. It’s a romantic Hollywood movie made for adults that refuses to sentimentalize its subject and treats all its characters respectfully despite their failings and their flaws. Joan Crawford stars as Daisy, an ambitious commercial artist who becomes involved in a complicated love triangle with two very different men. Her longtime paramour is a cocksure married lawyer (Dana Andrews) who has a moral compass that seems to ebb and flow with the changing tides. Her new lover (Henry Fonda) is a shell-shocked war veteran, bereaved widow and onetime naval architect trying to find his footing in postwar New York. Daisy must choose which man she wants to spend the rest of her life with but the decision is not an easy one and director Otto Preminger ratchets up the tension by shooting this somber melodrama as if it were a film noir. In Daisy Kenyon love is a mystery that the resilient heroine must solve but a clear-cut solution remains frustratingly out of reach.
Based on a bestselling novel by the feminist author Elizabeth Janeway and adapted for the screen by screenwriter David Hertz, this 20th Century Fox release was met with cool indifference when it opened on Christmas day in 1947 with critics at The New York Times calling it “Somewhat more mature and compelling than the usual run of pictures of this sort.” They also complained that “The story goes completely to pot. The weakness here is the scenario, for after David Hertz builds up his problem he obviously doesn’t know how to resolve it, at least, not with any noticeable ingenuity. . . As the producer-director of Daisy Kenyon, Otto Preminger keeps the film going at a nice clip and this helps greatly to gloss over the threadbare portions of the narrative, which would be a lot more obvious in the hands of less attractive players.”
Despite the criticism of the Times, I find the oblique nature of Daisy Kenyon to be one of the film’s best assets. Instead of pummeling viewers with its concerns that allude to working women’s fears of spinsterhood, adultery, child abuse, shell-shock, traumatic grief and the horrific treatment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, Preminger gently weaves these various narrative threads throughout the film. The final product is an absorbing mid-century American tapestry conceived as a shadow drenched noir that subtly addresses many of the concerns facing the country at the time. Holding this intricate drama together are some outstanding performances from three Hollywood actors who were at the top of their game.
“I enjoyed working with Miss Crawford. We were alike because we were both people who tried hard. There are some people who scorn those who seem to be trying too hard. Miss Crawford and I were people who believed there was no such thing as trying too hard . . . She did her best every day, and I did too because that was the way we were made.” – Otto Preminger, quoted in Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, a Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler
After winning an Oscar for playing a mother in Mildred Pierce (1945), Crawford reportedly begged to get the lead role in Daisy Kenyon. She was determined to show Hollywood that she could still play a convincing love interest and the 40-year-old actress was right. Many critics have described Crawford as being “too old” for the role of Daisy but nothing could be further from the truth. She was, give or take a few years, the same age as her male costars and their shared maturity is what makes the film all the more convincing and heartfelt. Preminger managed to reel in Crawford’s more theatrical traits and she is at her very best playing the driven Daisy, a woman who is intensely focused on her career but also eager to find a suitable partner to share her life with. Andrews and Fonda are also at their very best playing two dissimilar men vying for her attention. Andrew’s character is smarmy and controlling but still manages to be charming despite his penchant for calling everyone “Honeybunch” and treating his lawful wife (Ruth Warrick) like a bad disease he can’t shake. At first glance, Fonda is a pussycat in comparison but his soft-spoken nature masks a man of fortitude trying to contain a tsunami of pent-up emotion. As is typical of Preminger, these characters are multifaceted individuals and none of them are are particularly likable although the film’s alliance is with Crawford. But in the end, their humanity is unmistakable.
Some have called Daisy Kenyon a “passionless” drama and while it is true that much of the film’s romance is of the cerebral kind, this is a sensitive study of an adult relationship in turmoil. These strong-willed characters have no time for starry-eyed infatuation and juvenile banalities. They are looking for something solid that they can hang their hat on as they approach middle age.
The understated acting of everyone involved is easy to overlook and it has taken decades for critics and audiences to appreciate what Preminger and his cast managed to accomplish. Seventy years after its release, Daisy Kenyon is still ripe for rediscovery and the curious can currently catch it streaming on FilmStruck as part of the “Early Otto” (as in Otto Preminger) theme.
Kimberly Lindbergs
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