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Post by topbilled on Oct 29, 2023 20:29:52 GMT
Quite the high body count in this one. The cast had to kick all the dead stars out of the way just to get off the set. The scene with Lavinia dying reminded me of how Rhett & Scarlett's daughter Bonnie died in GONE WITH THE WIND.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 29, 2023 20:31:14 GMT
Doctor: "Philip Fury of Clare Hall. It has a good sound. Hasn't it?"
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Post by Andrea Doria on Oct 29, 2023 20:35:05 GMT
Valerie Hobson's hair is perfect for Technicolor.
Yes, for a while there I thought it was turning red from grief.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 29, 2023 20:35:06 GMT
b l a n c h e
f u r y
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Post by Andrea Doria on Oct 29, 2023 20:36:54 GMT
Well this one was great fun! Thanks Topbilled!
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 29, 2023 20:46:29 GMT
Well this one was great fun! Thanks Topbilled! Exactly how I feel, just a fun story.
It was very good month of movies Topbilled - thank you. I don't envy the person who has to follow this month.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 29, 2023 20:58:28 GMT
Glad you enjoyed it!
***
My review:
BLANCHE FURY is a very atmospheric film. Director Marc Allegret is doing specific things with the positioning of the actors and the use of Technicolor to create illusions of depth and perspective as in a Renaissance painting. It is exquisitely photographed, and all seasons are in evidence with the on-location shooting. It must’ve been a painstaking and exacting process to capture a variety of images that ultimately end up in the finished picture.
It helps to see and feel the change in temperature. Not only do scenes in the countryside and moments around the exterior of the manor show us a variety of seasonal activities, but the way the characters adjust to these seasons perfectly conveys how their own inner-natures change.
Allegret was a French director who went to England after the Second World War to make a few English-language productions. BLANCHE FURY, a gothic love story based on a real-life incident, is considered the best of those. By the early 1950s, Allegret would return to his native France where he spent the rest of his career. One assumes that if BLANCHE FURY is any indication of his talents, there must be a lot of greatness in his other works as well.
In BLANCHE FURY a woman (Valerie Hobson) travels to a country estate where she marries a distant cousin (Michael Gough). She doesn’t love the cousin and has a torrid affair with their handsome groundskeeper (Stewart Granger), who is an illegitimate heir of the family’s fortune. Desiring an opportunity to be with each other and claim all the money and property, the couple carry out a plan to murder the cousin. The twist here is that they stage the murder so prejudiced locals will think a band of gypsies did it.
With an engaging storyline and Allegret’s assured direction, BLANCHE FURY stands up quite well. Not only is the use of color and staging incredibly controlled, the two leads, Hobson and Granger, simply could not be better. Mr. Granger’s line deliveries are the sharpest ever seen from him, with the actor at his most effective during a dramatic courtroom scene near the end of the story.
Miss Hobson, in the titular role, was married to producer Anthony Havelock-Allan. She brings a pensive quality and a type of penance to the character she portrays. There are layers upon layers of guilt that she projects after a dangerous wish turns deadly. All her moments are solemnly played.
What pulls even the most casual viewer into this film is how we are immersed in the history of the Fury family, learning about entanglements that go back generations. Granger's character Philip Thorn is an outsider and not exactly heroic. When the heroine starts falling for him and is caught up in his schemes, she is on a course for tragedy. She realizes the error of her ways and turns him into the police, but by then she is pregnant. Ironically, the son born in the last scene will be named after Philip and given the surname and legitimacy he had always been denied.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 29, 2023 21:10:31 GMT
Well this one was great fun! Thanks Topbilled! Exactly how I feel, just a fun story.
It was very good month of movies Topbilled - thank you. I don't envy the person who has to follow this month. This is my cue to tell readers that November's selections will be hosted by you, Fading Fast...LOL
“English Rose Melodramas”
11/5 THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS (1949) 11/12 BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945) 11/19 MADELEINE (1950) 11/26 THE HOLLY AND THE IVY (1952)
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 30, 2023 2:29:22 GMT
I just realized that Blanche Fury is an excellent segue movie into next month's films with their theme of respectable English women having an abundance of wanton lust lurking just beneath the surface of their prim and proper English mien.
Blanche Fury from 1948 with Valerie Hobson and Stewart Granger
Many movies attempt to have a social, political or religious conscience; others, like Blanche Fury just let a good story rip. Blanche Fury's message-free ripping tale of lust, greed, class envy and murder plays out like a Gothic romance novel brought to the screen.
When a poor but proud distant Fuller cousin, played by Valerie Hobson, is offered the role of governess for the daughter of the wealthy branch of her family, she jumps at the opportunity to live at the estate of her elderly cousin, his widowed son and the son's daughter.
We quickly learn that the wealthy branch of her family has adopted the name of Fury because, through a quirk of British law, the family inherited the Fury's large estate. This does not sit well, though, with the estate's current manager, played by Stewart Granger.
Granger, the illegitimate son of the former estate's owner, is embittered as he feels he was cheated out of his birthright. Believing his Italian mother was married to the estate's former owner, making him a legal heir, he's engaged a lawyer to find the Italian marriage certificate.
Hobson, pretty in an aristocratic British way, not only walks into this combustible situation, she ramps it up by having a secret affair with the handsome Granger, while considering a marriage proposal from the family's priggish son, which would bring her wealth and status.
It's the standard tale of sex with the strappingly handsome stable hand, while being all prim and proper in the drawing room where a high-stakes game of societal and family chess plays out.
With all the ingredients in place for the story to ignite, the situation just needs a catalyst, which is provided by a band of Gypsies who steal some of the Fury's horses. Gypsies are an amazingly convenient catalyst in a surprisingly large number of movies from this era.
The third act then plays out with a double murder, love gone awry, a dramatic trial, complete with a shocking tabloid-like confession on the stand, and then, one final twist to "right" all the morality (so that the movie could get past the censors).
Overall, this is Hobson's movie as the posture-perfect, slightly horse-faced, but pretty and diction-perfect star embodies a poor relative looking to rise in the world. Granger, in one of his better roles, and also diction perfect, plays the brooding Adonis with passion.
Director Marc Allegret used wonderful location shots for the castle and countryside that, combined with a rich and dark (not bright as often was the case in this era) color, created a fittingly Gothic and ominous mood for his period movie.
Blanche Fury is enjoyable as the British, this is a UK production, can do tales of lust and murder raging just beneath the calm English surface better than anyone. Only in England can "more tea?" be code for "meet me in the stables later for some sweaty sex."
While Hobson's and Granger's characters are no Heathcliff and Cathy, as Blanche Fury isn't Wuthering Heights, if you enjoy your Gothic bodice rippers told with an English sheen of respectability, you'll find Blanche Fury to be ninety minutes of lurid fun.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Oct 30, 2023 15:25:21 GMT
After watching 50 movies with Topbilled and Fading Fast, I just have to take a moment to sincerely thank them both. Not only is the viewing itself always fun, I have learned an incredible amount.
Topbilled always points out things the director has done that I otherwise wouldn't have noticed. I've been obliviously enjoying the end results of many fine directors all my life without giving them enough credit. I enjoyed the beauty of "Blanche Fury" but hadn't noticed the director's use of changing seasons.
Fading Fast has done the same thing with screen writing. Raising my awareness of why and how they've made the story work. I loved it when the gypsies popped up, even mentioned it, but didn't think about how they served as a catalyst.
So fifty big thanks from me this week, now I'm looking forward to British Women Go Wild month!
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 30, 2023 15:44:50 GMT
After watching 50 movies with Topbilled and Fading Fast, I just have to take a moment to sincerely thank them both. Not only is the viewing itself always fun, I have learned an incredible amount.
Topbilled always points out things the director has done that I otherwise wouldn't have noticed. I've been obliviously enjoying the end results of many fine directors all my life without giving them enough credit. I enjoyed the beauty of "Blanche Fury" but hadn't noticed the director's use of changing seasons.
Fading Fast has done the same thing with screen writing. Raising my awareness of why and how they've made the story work. I loved it when the gypsies popped up, even mentioned it, but didn't think about how they served as a catalyst.
So fifty big thanks from me this week, now I'm looking forward to British Women Go Wild month!
Thank you, that's very kind of you to say. I share your appreciation of Topbilled's comments as I learn from almost every post of his.
My non-scientific award for the best month of movies so far goes to you, Andrea Doria, with your "Letters" month. I loved all four of those choices with "The Letter" and "A Letter to Three Wives" being all-time favorites. "A Letter to an Unknown Woman" and "The 13th Letter" are also two of my favorite Sunday Live! "discoveries," so much so and as you know, I bought and read the book to the former.
I share your appreciation for our group and hope we can continue for a long time.
I'm also hopeful that "British Women Go Wild" month (I wish I had thought of that title) is enjoyed by everyone. But I'm worried about what my harshest critic will think - he doesn't suffer fools gladly.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 30, 2023 15:57:30 GMT
Andrea's post made me think of what everyone brings to the screenings. We all have our own individual perspectives. I learned something from Andrea's comment on Valerie Hobson's acting, how she varied her lines readings on the witness stand, when she was given repetitive dialogue.
In December, we will do a few home front (WWII) melodramas. January is wide open, Andrea...so if you have a fun theme (or a specific performer) in mind, let us know!
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