The daughter of a musical mentor adores a promising composer, who is quite fond of the adolescent. When her father dies, an uncle arrives with his own grown daughter, who begins a romance with the composer which culminates in marriage but creates an emotional rivalry that affects the three.
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The idea of Joan Fontaine at age 25 playing a teenage girl certainly inspired my curiosity about this film. Her performance, which was one of her favorites, was Oscar nominated. Tessa Sanger is a role of complexity and Fontaine gives her a naive nobility in the body of a girl who is energetic and awkward. The daughter of a musical composer, she is infatuated with Lewis Dodd (Charles Boyer), a family friend who periodically comes to visit.Lewis is a frustrated composer with little regard for social conventions. His cynical nature is somewhat abated whenever he visits the Sangers, who live far outside the city. Lewis marries into a rich family and his wife, Florence (Alexis Smith), does her best to accommodate his artistic temperament, but she begins to see Tessa as a divisive factor in their relationship.The music in the film supports the film's story about love. Tessa's love is selfless and pure, the stuff of pure romanticism. Such sentiments are not available to Lewis, and his compositions reflect his inability to access emotional depth. Musical director Erich Wolfgang Korngold supplies a score that consciously illustrates the contrast between the dissonance of modernism with the melodic lushness of romanticism. This culminates in the dramatic and satisfying final scenes.Fine acting, solid direction by Edmund Goulding, wonderful music, beautiful fashions (if only they were in color!) all make for a unique film about love that may be timeless despite the tragic consequences of time. At its core is the performance by Fontaine, who is a joy to behold.
Joan Fontaine as a child is a little hard to take. True, that she pulls it off. After all, she received a best actress Oscar nomination for it in 1943.The picture is a heartbreak where Charles Boyer marries Alexis Smith, who really steals the picture with her acting, after his best friend dies suddenly and Smith and her father, the usual doting Charles Coburn come for the children. Problem is that Boyer and Fontaine, the child, are really stuck on each other.The sad ending will tug at you. Amazing that Peter Lorre, Dame May Witty and Eduardo Ciannelli are given so little to do in the film. Their acting talents are wasted here.
Based on a novel by Margaret Kennedy, this film The Constant Nymph, starring Charles Boyer and Joan Fontaine, is a typical 1940's studio retelling of a classic style romance, the story of a fragile young girl's infatuation and adoration for an older, attractive musician.While I think the production values and the sensuality of Letter From An Unknown Woman are superior to this film, this story also manages to captivate the viewer with its own brooding romanticism, solid performances, and beautiful music by Erich Korngold (Amazon sells CDs of this music in several movie soundtrack anthologies). Thankfully my copy of this film is pristine and that improves one's enjoyment of it.Striking Alexis Smith as the unloved wife delivers a mighty performance, and almost steals the picture from Joan Fontaine and Charles Boyer. The supporting actors are also very good, including Charles Coburn, Peter Lorre, Brenda Marshall, Dame May Witty, and Jean Muir. I admit I was a bit frustrated by the character of the musician played by Charles Boyer. Men who marry women just because they are attracted to them and not because they love them irk me to no end. That was the situation here and it sets the viewer up for a very frustrating experience by the end of the picture. The Constant Nympth is a decent romantic melodrama, with a very touching conclusion, but it's not outstanding or unforgettable, like Letter From An Unknown Woman surely is.
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").
