The Constant Nymph

I saw this film on television when I was in my early teens but unfortunately, due to legal problems over the screenplay rights, it cannot be shown on television or released to video at this time. I have collected several recordings of Korngold's beautiful score including a moving performance of his Tone Poem "Tomorrow". The film's star, Joan Fontaine, has said this is, along with "Letter From An Unknown Woman" (1948) her favorite among her films. Fortunately the film is safeguarded in the Turner vaults and hopefully they will be able to bring this truly wonderful movie back into the public eye in the near future.

TCM recently managed to clear the rights of this film from the literary executors of Basil Dean (who coauthored the play version) and Margaret Kennedy (who authored the novel and play adaptation). The television premiere was on TCM on September 28, 2011. The original 1924 novel has been reprinted in paperback but I have not read it yet.

It seems that the 1943 Hollywood adaptation cleans most of the sex out of the story which was dealt with in the novel. Also the book focuses on the entire Sanger family while the film (and play) focuses on the central triangle of Tessa, Lewis Dodd and Florence. I think that Boyer and Fontaine are somewhat miscast as Tessa and Dodd though both perform excellently. It seems that in the novel the pair become lovers though Tessa is underage and they actually do escape together to Brussels. Also, the sister Toni Sanger already has had a sexual affair with Birnbaum, played in the movie by Peter Lorre as Fritz Bercovy. In the film both affairs remain chaste - at least until Toni Sanger is safely married to the Birnbaum/Bercovy character.

In the film, the pedophilia issue is dodged by having Dodd and Tessa realize and acknowledge they are lovers/soul mates without any form of consummation - even kissing. Their love is idealized and unrealizable on this earth. One love scene that was probably played for real in the book or play is done as a "dream vision" by Tessa while she listen's to Dodd's symphony on the radio.

Fontaine is too old but shows a remarkable lack of vanity - wearing no makeup and using an awkward, hyperactive physicality to suggest an adolescent girl. Boyer comes off as too much the mature European roué - Robert Donat, Errol Flynn and Leslie Howard were all considered for the part. Not enough is made of Lewis' social nonconformity - in the book he is also the son of wealth who repudiates his class and its values. Alexis Smith as Florence, the unhappy excluded wife comes off best in some ways - her character has a genuine conflict going on and is proactive. Smith as another poster mentioned is simultaneously hateful, understandable and pitiful and she fights for a relationship that is essentially doomed. Florence's attraction to bohemian artistic types is in conflict with her basic inability to sympathize with their lifestyles and values. This conflict is truthfully captured by Smith and Goulding.

The studio sets in the Austrian Tyrol scenes look like a mix of Kentucky farm and English moors and are not convincing. There is a genuine sophistication here but without the characters taking that final fatal step into the forbidden, some of the guts of the story is lost. The previous two adaptation of the book - a 1928 silent with Ivor Novello and Mabel Poulton (preserved by the BFI) and an unavailable or lost 1934 remake with Victoria Hopper and Brian Aherne evidently hewed closer to the novel.

Although I was only 13 years old the first time I saw this film, it moved me. That may be because I could relate to the Joan Fontaine character. Sometimes we fall in love with a movie for reasons we cannot recall. In any case, I have been searching for a copy (VHS or DVD)for years and find that it is no longer available. I am disappointed to learn that. My sister and I saw this movie together; we cried, it was so lovely. We have discussed it over the years and have both tried to remember certain scenes and some dialogue, but the background music was the most memorable. In fact, we both forgot that it was Charles Boyer who was in the film; we were mistaken in thinking it was Brian Aherne, and that may be one of the reasons we could not find it!

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....

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.