Tessa, la nymphe au coeur fidèle

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.

What a disappointment! A great cast miscast. Shades of Lolita! Better the title should be "The Cloying Nymphet". Ordinarily I like Joan Fontaine, but at 26 she was too manufactured as a 14 year old. Certain poses she would strike were appropriate and in keeping with the age of the character but only certain and only a few at that. I don't know the novel so I can't compare. But in the movie, all she needed was a piece of straw dangling from her mouth and she could have been a consumptive flat-chested Jane Russell beckoning Boyer - an easy 20 years older - in the person of a dense lech to come away from his piano and jump in the hay with her. He, too, is a favorite, but there was something repelling about the 2 of them in action with one another. Alexis Smith, as her older (although she was 4 years younger) cousin who is married to Boyer's lech, stole whatever scenes she was in, dupe that she was. Peter Lorre, a floating in and out presence who had nothing to add and added plenty of it. I kept waiting for - and hoping that - Eduardo Ciannelli as a butler (!!!) no less, to pull out a gun and say stick 'em up. Charles Coburn, again another masterful actor, got lost in the scenery. Dame May Witty was the most fun in her great Dame manner. And finally, the Tyrolean background was obviously the Warner Bros. backlot on a bad day. Out of circulation for 70 years, I'd always been curious about it, especially for the assemblage of actors. Curiosity killed this cat.

I know a lot of folks like this film. I am not saying they're at all wrong...it just didn't work for me. Much of this was because the relationship between Albert and Tessa was just a bit creepy to me...and wasn't always convincing.

When the film begins, Albert (Charles Boyer) is a struggling composer. And, when he goes to visit an old friend and his children, the old man dies...leaving the daughters to stay with their grandfather. But Albert decides to spend more time with them...sort of like a godfather. The problem is that 14 year-old Tessa (Joan Fontaine) is smitten with him and longs to become his lover one day. This is when it got a tad creepy for me. Fortunately, Albert didn't reciprocate. However, after Albert marries, his marriage is a bit rocky...and all the while Tessa is watching him...longingly.

My other problem with this very slickly made film is that I hate the idea of actresses in their mid-20s playing 14 year-olds. This rarely works well and I think an 18, 19 year-old could have pulled it off better. Mind you, Fontaine isn't bad (except when she occasionally stares off into space...something that she did here and in "Rebecca"...and I have no idea why)...in fact she's MUCH more convincing than Ginger Rogers in "The Major and the Minor"...a film than many love but which I think is among Billy Wilder's worst movies because of this.

So, overall you have a very slick love story that many folks love...but I didn't. I didn't hate it...but that's hardly a glowing endorsement. Plus what do I know? The Academy thought Fontaine was just fine....

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").

After more than half a century of being withdrawn from circulation, this ripe example of romantic film making in the best high style that was so typical of Warner Bros' output in the 1940s, has finally been set free from copyright limbo by the TCM Lawyers, following a financial settlement with the heirs of Margaret Kennedy (author of the novel on which the film is based) and Basil Dean (the film director who co-authored the play with her, another key source for the screenplay).

Finally released for television last month (though only in the USA) it will soon make its long awaited debut on DVD. Was it worth the wait? In my opinion, the answer is a resounding yes.

The story (recounted by others here, so I won't weary you with another resume) inspired cast, director and especially the composer, to a rare degree and while the film retains obvious links to its stage origins and has a stylised, often unrealistic look, this approach suits the material eminently.

While the plot revolves around a curious triangle between a neurotic composer (Boyer) a worldly and wealthy woman (Smith) and a teenage girl (Fontaine) it has a subordinate agenda that most reviewers miss entirely.

Few are aware that Erich Wolfgang Korngold campaigned for this film and became closely involved in its production, even to the extent of influencing script development. Originally, he wanted Lewis Dodd to write a simple love song that would eventually develop into a romantic opera, but that idea was dropped, probably due to cost. It was replaced by a climactic transformation into a symphonic poem for mezzo soprano, wordless women's chorus and large orchestra.

Korngold kept the notion of an evolving musical work and made the battle between romanticism and dissonant modernity a key element that parallels the battle for the composer's soul, fought between the simple heart of the constant nymph with the cold, brittle modern woman played by Alexis Smith.

Korngold felt the battle between atonality and dissonance and more direct romanticism very keenly in his own life and relished the chance to create a score where romanticism triumphed.

The musical sequences are outstanding and when Sanger (Montagu Love) or Lewis Dodd (Boyer) play the piano, that is Korngold himself we hear on the soundtrack.

The elaborate Swiss mountain set incorporating the Sanger home was constructed on Warner's largest sound stage and was subsequently redressed to become the Yorkshire moors for the film DEVOTION, a risible biopic of the Brontes, made shortly afterwards and which was originally intended for Fontaine and her sister Olivia De Havilland. In the event, only De Havilland appeared - Fontaine preferred to make JANE EYRE at Fox instead.

CONSTANT NYMPH is enlivened by some familiar faces in the cast, including Peter Lorre, who is largely wasted, and Charles Coburn as an irascible Uncle - a part better suited to Sydney Greenstreet, who presumably wasn't available.

The finale, presenting Korngold's lush symphonic poem TOMORROW, is nicely done and the mezzo soprano seen on stage is actually Clemence Groves, a local Los Angeles concert singer who is also heard on the soundtrack and was the wife of George Groves, a key sound dept technician at Warners.

Those who are eagle-eyed will spot a poster for Korngold's legendary opera Die tote Stadt on the wall of Sanger's study, that is clearly visible in the scene early in the film between Dodd and Sanger, and placed on the wall by the film's associate producer Henry Blanke as a tribute to his friend Korngold, who didn't even notice it until told of the gesture at the film's premiere.

This is a one-of-a kind film that is unlikely to be remade. It's well worth seeing and has a hypnotic appeal that bears repeated viewing.