Daisy Keynon (1947), The Moon is Blue (1953), Saint Joan (1957)

Three servings of Preminger


Daisy Kenyon

This is one of director Otto Preminger's lest interesting movies, its not even an ambitious failure, it aims low and barley clears that mark.  A work-men like piece of studio hackery, it's a romantic triangle concerning the titular Daisy Kenyon (Joan Crawford, in full Mildred Pierce 'wonded nobility') a successful magazine fashion illustrator, directionless war veteran, widower, and former yacht designer Peter Lapham (Peter Fonda), and successful adulteress lawyer Dan O'Mara (Dana Andrews). You may find you don't really care about them. The most promising aspect of the story, non-crusading lawyer O'Mara's, conscience raising agreement to defend a decorated Japanese-American war veteran, who's had his farm stolen out from him, is done away with in a very few minutes and we never even get to meet the client. The movies two love stories feel clumsily stitched together, and whenever one starts to get you involved the other one intrudes. The films few middlingly successful moments are easily overwhelmed amid its pale noncommittal melodrama. Both director and stars come across as only partly invested in this thing. In short, it's poor.


The Moon is Blue

Preminger had directed the play The Moon is Blue on Broadway in 1951, it was a success that ran 924 performances, so he decided to make the movie. The Breen office, 'inforcers' of the then operating Motion Picture Production Code, objected to the stories "light and gay treatment of the subject of illicit sex and seduction", as well as the use of the forbidden word "virgin", and other 'racey' dialogue. Preminger thought this was silly, as well as a great source of free, publicity generating controversy, so he decided to release the film without MPAA certification. This was effectively the death blow to the often arbitrary, moralistic, content policing, that defined most of the studio system era that was then in decline. At first Preminger had a hard time getting theaters to screen the film, but by the end of 1953 it was the 15th highest grossing movie of the year, produced for a little under $375,000, and pulling in 3.5 million.

Yet what of the film its self? Well if your looking for the salacious your going to be disappointed, I suspect that even a large portion of the audience at the time found the film far from 'blue' in content. The story concerns a young women (Maggie McNamara, who looks a lot like Audry Hepburn), who runs into an older, 'worldly' man (William Holden) in the Empire State Building, and is invited back to his apartment, to which she agrees on the condition that he behave 'honorably'. Holden has just broken his engagement to upstairs neighbour Dawn Addams (whose suppose to be 18, Holden's character seems to like them young), and whose father David Niven is attempting to determine why. Both men are enamoured of Maggie, she's a doe-eyed and beguiling creature, who puts on airs of being beyond her years, and that's just adorable. There is no sex in the film, and in fact its message is one of preserving chastity before marriage, but apparently even bringing up the subject that a young women might not keep her pre-martial virtue, rankled a lot of feathers. The movie is very play like, just a few sets, and other then store clerks and the like only five real characters. A very pleasant picture, good natured and fun, and David Niven seems to be having a ball. Don't expect anything spectacular, but the movie is a Good one.

Saint Joan

Preminger conducted a much publicised 'world-wide' search to find the young women to play Joan of Arc, in his forth coming and much hyped film production of the George Bernard Shaw play. Preminger wanted to discover a star, an unknown who would take the world by storm in her first film, and wow critics and the public in a part that can intimidate even experienced actresses. Who he found was Jean Seberg, the 18 year old daughter of an Iowa druggist, whose only experience acting was one summer of work in summer stock, she didn't even enter into the competition herself, her neibhour signed her up. This part was beyond her, though she certainly tried hard, Preminger was frustrated but had committed himself, and the film reaped both disappointing reviews as well as box office. Preminger stood by Seberg however, and used her to much better effect in his next film, Bonjour Tristesse (1958). In fact Seberg would grow into a pretty capable actress, with parts in such films as Breathless (1960), Paint Your Wagon (1969), and Airport (1970). She was ill-fated however, and like fellow Preminger discovery Maggie McNamara, would die of suicide by drug overdose.

The film is a bit of a mess, The (London) Times wrote that the screen play by Graham Green contained "some odd omissions, interpolations and additions" and that "the result is a certain scrappiness and confusion in the first half of the film in place of Shaw's slow and careful build-up." Which is funny because I thought the film was awfully slow to begin with, and in my limited experience with Bernard Shaw's work, (via film adaptations of Androcles and the Lion, as well as the Pygmalion musical adaptation My Fair Lady), I found his work simple, slow, and pedantic, with a lot less to say then it thinks it has (yes this sounds presumptuous).  A decent cast including Richard Widmark, Richard Todd, and John Gielgud, all give performances that feel like they would have been much more appropriate for the stage then for the screen.. I felt uninvolved, and the story of Joan of Arc, one of immense passion, has to be involving to havea point.This supposedly 'epic production' felt both constrained and long at 110 minutes. I'll grant that its an ambitious failure, but its still not worth your time.

Poor