Wednesday 8 August 2018
‘Daisy Daisy, Give me your answer do!’ 2018
I’ve wanted to see Daisy Kenyon (1947) for as long as I can remember. Probably close to forty years. But as many times as its been on Fox Classics or Turner Classic Movies, or just plain-old television, I’ve always missed it.
This week I had some films on loan from the local library and I was caught between Kandahar (2001), Geostorm (2017) , Daisy Kenyon (1947) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Alison whittled it down to Geostorm and Daisy Kenyon and I chose the latter.
And how glad I am to have chosen to make my wife watch yet another black and white film. Black and white films tend to make her fall asleep, as do James Bond films. But not this time. The rich, many-faceted, storyline made this a film to observe for how risky it was for the time in which it was made.
An important man has a mistress, and a wife and children, and the mistress is always mistreated. Into her life comes an ordinary person, not publicly regarded as brilliant, but brilliant in his own individual way. The cad philanderer is played by Dana Andrew and the quietly brilliant individual is played by Henry Fonda. The woman, who is fiercely independent, who doesn’t know why she’s allowing herself to maintain this ridiculous relationship, other than the subtext, which is that they must be having incredible sex, is played by Joan Crawford.
Whether the author of the novel or the screenplay had it in mind, the words of this iconic song, ‘Daisy Daisy’, are very apt to many aspects of this remarkable film.
How does it all end? Well, for those kinds of SPOILERS you’ll have to read my observations.
