Joan Fontaine RIP

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/dec/16/joan-fontaine-oscar-winning-actor-dies-at-96

Edit: her sibling rival won the longevity contest then.

[matt j]

Joan Fontaine RIP

She was my favorite actress for about a year shortly after I left college and went through a serious Hitchcock movie phase.

Considering I only really have seen Rebecca, Suspicion, and Ivanhoe with any strong remembrances, I think that must say something about her performance as Ms. de Winter. RIP.

[Edie St Pierre]

Joan Fontaine RIP

'Suspicion' is my favourite of her Hitchcock films, even if the ending is a bit of a cop-out (which wasn't Hitchcocks fault, the studio didn't like the original script). 'Rebecca' is good obviously, but that's entirely due to Fontaine and Judith Anderson I think Olivier lets the side down big time, I don't think he cuts it at all as Max.

There's a brilliant 70's tv version of 'Rebecca' with Joanna David and Jeremy Brett that's miles better than the Hitchcock version. I think it's on Youtube actually. It was a couple of years ago anyway.

She also made an off-beat late 60's Hammer film called 'The Witches' by the way, which I love to bits and is deffo worth checking out if you haven't already seen it.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Joan Fontaine RIP

She probably did incipient panic as well as an female actor, except perhaps Jane Fonda. At her best — letter from an Unknown Woman, The Constant Nymph and of course Rebecca you felt she was on the verge of fleeing the scene at any moment.

[evilC]

Joan Fontaine RIP

Blimey! I'd kind of assumed she was actually already dead. A shame, though, of course. 'Letter From An Unknown Woman' is one of the great tearjerkers, IMHO.

[MsD]

Joan Fontaine RIP

Mat wrote: 'Suspicion' is my favourite of her Hitchcock films, even if the ending is a bit of a cop-out (which wasn't Hitchcocks fault, the studio didn't like the original script). 'Rebecca' is good obviously, but that's entirely due to Fontaine and Judith Anderson I think Olivier lets the side down big time, I don't think he cuts it at all as Max.

Ironically, Olivier had wanted Vivienne Leigh to play the role, and treated Miss Fontaine badly, complaining to Hitchcock that she was no good in her role.

Several factors contributed authenticity to her Mrs de Winter:  a long, drawn out casting period, in which her abilities were cast into doubt; Olivier's attitude; the fact that life imitated art in her own marriage at the time, as she took on a new household in the shadow of her husband's long term lover.

The ever-sadistic Hitchcock gave her a hefty slap before a crying scene (she had asked the actress who played Danvers to do it, but she was hesitant).

To add to that, she was simply an excellent actress; see David Thomson's critique of her performance in LFAUW, where she played a teenager (at the beginning) at the actual age of 30.

Jane Eyre was another of her suffering (punished) heroines, to add to the wife in Suspicion, and the forgotten babymother in LFAUW. She deserved her award for Suspicion; again, her leading man, Cary Grant, bitched about her.

I hate the term "victimy", but film noir often punished women, and Miss Fontaine seems to have attracted more than her fair share of bullying both on and off screen. I somehow doubt that it's all her fault. Intriguing, anyway.

[G-Man]

Joan Fontaine RIP

The ever-sadistic Hitchcock gave her a hefty slap before a crying scene (she had asked the actress who played Danvers to do it, but she was hesitant).

The version I heard goes that Fontaine asked Judith Anderson, who played Mrs Danvers, to admninister the slap. When Anderson declined, Fontaine asked Hitchcock. Obviously he obliged.

[MsD]

Joan Fontaine RIP

Hitchcock bullied and terrorised his leading ladies, that's well-documented.

She asked the actress to do it first, then asked Hitchcock. My point in calling him "sadistic" that he was happy to do it.

To add, Mrs de Winter and Jane Eyre were, of course, characters created by women, so film noir narratives aren't to blame for them or their horrible husbands.

[G-Man]

Joan Fontaine RIP

Yeah, donlt mind the focts. Of course, by your logic, would you call Joan Fontaine masochistic because she asked to be slapped?

Hitchcock bullied and terrorised men as well, though not so much his leading men. There is a line of thought that suggests that the bullying was designed not for sexual kicks (as the terminology of sadism would imply) but as a psychological device to rattle the actors who had to play vulnerable characters.

Given that in Hitchcock films the burden of vulnerability was loaded on the female leads, it woukd follow that they would have been more frequently at the receiving end of Hitchcock's methods.

He didn't apply those methods to Kim Novak, who in Vertigo was not the vulnerable type (Novak speaks well of Hitchcock, incidentally)

That is not to suggest that Hitchcock wasn't a mysoginist or a complex individual. But the slapping of Fontaine is not the best example to support that nition. Nor is it paying tribute to Fontaine to suggest it is.

[MsD]

Joan Fontaine RIP

I'm not discussing Hitchcock in depth here, I included his slapping her as something that added reality to her performance in Rebecca. She asked to be slapped for that reason. If you thought it necessary to clarify the context, fine, we've done that, so why go on about my ignoring the facts? Or "focts", even.

Look at what Tippi Hedren and Melanie Griffiths have to say about Hitchcock, for another perspective. (Tippi Hedren also "spoke well" of him at the time, he was a very influential man.). His behaviour towards her continued after she finished working on his films, so he wasn't just going for an effect.

I'd rather discuss Joan Fontaine's work here.

[G-Man]

Joan Fontaine RIP

...

[Edie St Pierre]

Joan Fontaine RIP

MsD wrote:

Ironically, Olivier had wanted Vivienne Leigh to play the role, and treated Miss Fontaine badly, complaining to Hitchcock that she was no good in her role.

The other thing that's really odd, given her fractious relationship with her sister, was that roughly the same time that Joan Fontaine was making 'Rebecca', Olivia de Havilland was playing the saintly foil to Vivienne Leigh in 'Gone With the Wind'.

Or maybe GWTW was just before, I dunno about the continuities of the shooting of the two films.

[G-Man]

Joan Fontaine RIP

GWTW was filmed and was released a year earlier. But in 1941, both were nominated for an Oscar. Joan won, though that was not the cause of the feud.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Joan Fontaine RIP

I hate the term "victimy", but film noir often punished women,

Broadly that's true. Women, and to a lesser extent men, were always subject to stereotypical casting in Hollywood. They probably still are, but we're too close to to notice as clearly. I'm not sure noir movies were particularly bad. After all, as a genre it's a post-hoc invention, no one said "this is gonna be a noir movie, so we need a bruised dame." Also, for every victimised and disposable Spillane babe, there's a Brigid O'Shaughnessey or Nora Charles from Hammett, neither of whom could be remotely seen as victims. Also, and this is just my opinion, I don't think any of the films I've seen Joan Fontaine in would qualify comfortably as noir, even though the term lacks clear definition.

and Miss Fontaine seems to have attracted more than her fair share of bullying both on and off screen. I somehow doubt that it's all her fault. Intriguing, anyway.

Is that accurate? On screen in her later (generally post-war) roles, she was mostly cast as — another sterotype — the sophisticated scheming, bitch. Most of them haven't retained the popularity of her early work however, so that image of her has faded. Off-screen I dunno, I'm not really a follower of celebrity lives but, film encyclopedist Ephraim Katz described her in 1979 as "A highly accomplished woman... a licensed pilot, champion balloonist, prize-winning tuna fisherman, expert golfer, and Cordon Bleu cook. Also a licensed interior decorator. She might still have been bullied of course, but it's kind of hard to reconcile with the resumé.

[MsD]

Joan Fontaine RIP

Being strong and successful doesn't make you immune from bullying, but you may be right as regards her overall career, I don't know. There was the Rebecca experience which seemed to be an ordeal for her, with attacks from all sides. Of course, it was an ordeal that paid off for sticking though it; maybe nowadays she'd say it had been "an incredible journey" and a "roller coaster of emotion".

Noir - I will come back to, the cat wants attention - but it's my favourite genre and full of contradiction. I'm reading the latest edition of Women in Film Noir by E. Anne Kaplan (ed.) atm.

[Alderman Barnes]

Joan Fontaine RIP

Crikey. I thought for a moment that Just Fontaine had died, then realised that I was in the wrong forum and had been reading this thread since yesterday anyway, and then had to look up on Wikipedia to check that he wasn't already dead (he isn't).

What's the fucking matter with me?

[Commodore]

Joan Fontaine RIP

It was one almighty feud though. Whether it was staged or not it was intriguing in its own way.

Anyway, although De Havilland managed to beat her little sis by 2 Oscars to 1 I bet she'd have gladly swapped one of those for a role as memorable as that of Mrs De Winter.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Joan Fontaine RIP

MsD wrote:

Noir - I will come back to, the cat wants attention - but it's my favourite genre and full of contradiction. I'm reading the latest edition of Women in Film Noir by E. Anne Kaplan (ed.) atm.

I'd certainly be up for a discussion on Noir — something we've never had here, as far as I can recall. The problem will be agreeing on what it is.

[G-Man]

Joan Fontaine RIP

Commodore wrote: It was one almighty feud though. Whether it was staged or not it was intriguing in its own way.

Anyway, although De Havilland managed to beat her little sis by 2 Oscars to 1 I bet she'd have gladly swapped one of those for a role as memorable as that of Mrs De Winter.

It wasn't really an ugly feud. Neither talked much about it -- De Havilland made it a point not to comment on it at all -- and apparently it was more a case of sisters being totally estranged than a slagging-off festival.

[Edie St Pierre]

Joan Fontaine RIP

It's a bizarre one though. The wierdest story I have heard is the one about Joan Fontaine as a child or teenager getting all her clothes handed-down from her sister who used to slash them up with a razor before she gave them to her. That's odd innit, if it's true. They might have made the whole thing up between them for a laugh. The fact that JF had to use Fontaine as her stage name because her mother only allowed Olivia to use the family name suggests that it probably was a genuine feud arising from them both coming from a fairly unusual family.

[G-Man]

Joan Fontaine RIP

Yes, I think the resentment had its roots in their childhood -- Fontaine said as much -- though it seems a series of events cemented their estrangement.

From De Havilland's side, the breaking point came when Fontaine made some mean remarks about her sister's husband, and Fontaine apparently took umbrage when De Havilland executed some kind of public snub at the Oscars in revenge.

At the same time, I seem to remember that one sister bailed out the other from financial difficulties in the 1960s. Which suggests that the feud was not particularly hot.

[Beatle Simon]

Joan Fontaine RIP

Alderman Barnes wrote: Crikey. I thought for a moment that Just Fontaine had died, then realised that I was in the wrong forum and had been reading this thread since yesterday anyway, and then had to look up on Wikipedia to check that he wasn't already dead (he isn't).

What's the fucking matter with me?

Its not just Fontaine thats died - Ronnie Biggs has gone as well.

[Alderman Barnes]

Joan Fontaine RIP

See - I thought he'd carked it about ten years ago as well.