Joan Crawford In The Fog- Otto Preminger’s Daisy Kenyon- A Film Review

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Daisy Kenyon, starring Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews, Henry Fonda, directed by Otto Preminger (1947)   

 

Jack Kerouac, the “king of the beat” writers once wrote a sketch based on observing the filming of a movie starring Joan Crawford which was being shot up in the hills of San Francisco in the fog. And in the fog seems to be a proper metaphor for the situation Ms. Crawford find herself in as Daisy Kenyon in the film of the same name directed by Otto Preminger in the immediate post-World War II period. It seems that Daisy, a successful career woman, a high-end fashion designer, at a time when women were either being forced back into the home after the shortages of men gone off to World War II war had returned or had simply never left home, not had been encouraged to do so out in the great big competitive world, can’t decide on her proper place in the post-war universe. Her proper place in the endless male-female mating game. And hence the appropriateness of the fog metaphor.    

One of the virtues of going back deep into the black and white film archives from the 1930s and 1940s is that one gets a better handle on the social sensibilities of those times, at least as portrayed on the screen. You see this film has Daisy in an adulterous (and tempestuous) relationship something that would draw a yawn from today’s movie-goers but which meant something then, with a high-end Wall Street lawyer, Dan O’Mara played by a suave and ruggedly handsome Dana Andrews who was a matinee idol in such witty urbane guy roles then, who is not only married to a high-end boss’s daughter which allows him to lead a merry life of privilege but has two charming children to boot whom he loves in his own not uncommon then distant father way but which no question would cause problems in court. And for most of the film merry Dan is, one way or the other, not very interested, not enough anyway, to break the link to the gravy train and three martini lunches. That is where Daisy the successful career woman got off her tracks, wound up in the fog. She loved Dan in her own way but at some point realized she would always be “the other woman” and so one night, one stood up by Dan night, she had a date with a forlorn widowed (young wife died in an accident) ex-G.I. Peter played by good solid Midwestern salt of the earth values guy Henry Fonda. And they wind up having a short whirlwind romance and get married. End of story.        

Well, not quite, remember that fog business. Dan, now the odd man out, got “religion,” realized that Daisy was worth fighting for and of course Daisy still had some conflicts of her own about her marriage to Peter and her unresolved feelings for Dan. The conflicts abounding in her head including being the correspondent in a divorce proceeding initiated by Dan’s wife when she decided that he had had enough of Dan’s philandering, drove Daisy to distraction causing her severe mental anguish to speak nothing of interfering with her creative work. The whole thing got worked out in the end and just so you know despite his earnest pleas and promises hustling Dan was the odd-man out in this one. If you want to see a high-end 1940s melodrama well directed you can watch this one with some interest.