Jane eyre movie 1944 elizabeth taylor
Įva Marie Saint: Actress Has Gone from Marlon Brando to Supermanīorn to Be Bad has sweet and lovely Fontaine wreaking havoc on the lives of those around her. ( Laurence Olivier was the “menacing” husband in that one.) I should add that among 1941’s Academy Award losers was Fontaine’s not-at-all-happy older sister, Olivia de Havilland, in the running for Mitchell Leisen’s melodrama Hold Back the Dawn. Fontaine is fine as her second mousy Hitchcock heroine afraid of her husband (in this case, Cary Grant), going on to win the Best Actress Oscar of 1941 for her efforts – which many felt was a belated recognition for her “I” de Winter in Rebecca the previous year. Suspicion is considered a minor Alfred Hitchcock effort, partly because of its tacked-on, unconvincing happy ending. Elizabeth Taylor looks pretty in costume, but the film truly belongs to those around her. Most of the cast is in top form, particularly Fontaine – not at all like her past sweet English roses – Finlay Currie, and the film’s star, Robert Taylor. Highly recommended is Richard Thorpe’s Ivanhoe, perhaps the best (along with Michael Curtiz and William Keighley’s The Adventures of Robin Hood) of the medieval adventure tales made in Hollywood. Aldous Huxley, by the way, was one of the film’s credited screenwriters. It’s too bad that Michael Fassbender wasn’t around in the mid-’40s he’d have been a much more adequate Rochester/Fontaine match. Worse yet, Welles’ Rochester comes across as more creepy than brooding. (At least for the time being, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s well-received 2011 version starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender has become “the most famous” Jane Eyre movie.) Unfortunately, despite veteran George Barnes’ moody cinematography, Stevenson’s version isn’t nearly as involving as Charlotte Brontë’s novel.įontaine is okay in the title role, but her heart doesn’t seem to be totally in the part. Fontaine’s version, directed by Robert Stevenson (later of Mary Poppins fame) and co-starring Orson Welles as Rochester, used to be the most famous one. Jane Eyre has been made and remade about a zillion times in the last century or so. Enough members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences must have found Fontaine quite believable as a lovestruck teen, for The Constant Nymph earned her her third (and final) Best Actress nomination. In the film, 26-year-old Fontaine plays a 14-year-old infatuated with a composer ( Charles Boyer) married to her older cousin ( Alexis Smith). I’ve yet to check out The Constant Nymph, which had been unavailable for decades until TCM presented it a few months ago. TCM will be showing five Fontaine movies: Jane Eyre (1944), The Constant Nymph (1943), Born to Be Bad (1950), Suspicion (1941), and Ivanhoe (1952). 22, shines on Turner Classic Movies’ tonight.