Blanche Fury (1948)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

From my favorite movies..

An absolute waste of money

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

BLANCHE FURY is an engaging little 'gothic romance' type film, shot in luxurious colour and based on a novel by the long-forgotten author Marjorie Bowen, who wrote a number of fine ghost stories during her career. This one has Valerie Hobson marrying into a wealthy family, only to discover cruelty and a secret conspiracy in the mix. A youthful Stewart Granger plays the bastard son of an aristocratic line who is determined to retrieve what he sees as his birthright; Michael Gough also appears as a dastardly character in his career debut. This slow-moving production juggles drama, tragedy, thrills and romance rather successfully, building to an unpredictable and somewhat nihilistic climax that all makes good moral sense. There's at least one shocking twist and some good menace from the gypsy characters to keep the pace going.

A Gothic melodrama set in a huge English country mansion. A young penniless woman named Blanche(Valerie Hobson)sees her life's station moving upward when she takes the position of governess from her distant cousins. The wealthy cousins took the name Fury when acquiring the home from the Fury family. Blanche will fall in love with a disinherited Fury descendant Philip Thorn(Stewart Granger), who is serving as a manservant to patriarch Simon Fury(Walter Fitzgerald). The ambitious Blanche marries her employer(and relation)the soft spoken Laurence Fury(Michael Gough). Meanwhile Philip sees his chance to gain what he thinks is rightfully his own...the ancestral home; he convinces his lover Blanche to take part in murdering her husband. Why does this sound like an old soap opera? Other players: Susanne Gibbs, Ernest Jay, Sybille Binder, Maurice Denham and Edward Lexy.

I first discovered this little gem on tv a few years ago and loved it , i taped it and for some unknown reason kept watching it over and over it has a kind of hypnotic pull to i mean you have to really get into, i guess its not for everybody but it has been held in some regard up until recently,martin scorseses mentioned this as one of his guilty pleasures in film comment years ago and popular film presenter and critic from australia bill collins said while presenting another film that this would have to be one of the best british films from the forties.I totally agree it has a great gothic feel and the decor is marvelous as is the estate it was filmed on it has good solid performances and stewart granger is espescially good.Take note of the gypsy elements because at the time these points were crowd pullers other granger films to watch out for with similarities - "moonfleet","caravan","saraband for dead lovers","madonna of the seven moons"

Is Marc Allegret a director?Or does he simply(but smartly) use others' talents?His most memorable pre-war movies are not really his.For instance ,"Fanny" owes everything to its actor,Raimu,and its writer,Marcel Pagnol:it is actually a Pagnol movie.Ditto "Entrée des Artistes" which is remarkable by Henri Jeanson's lines ("I wear my Légion d'honneur to impress the fool" ) and Louis Jouvet's acting genius.A short English period occurred just after the war -when he other French directors such as Renoir and Duvivier worked abroad during the war.Which leads us to "Blanche Fury".This movie is par excellence an effort in which Allégret uses the others' skills.Objections remain:an arguable editing ,too much ellipse (the relationship Lawrence/Blanche is botched,and the pace is often too fast and hasty :again the Blanche /Thorn love affair is believable only because of the actors' splendid performances).And the screenplay,however ,is wonderful:snatches of lady Chatterley,Jane Eyre ,the turn of the screw,My cousin Rachel,Wuthering Heights and more come to mind.Even Vincente Minelli's "home from the hill"(1960)!This is a romantic story par excellence. Heredity and fatality play a prominent part is this story of silence and fury:Thorn (a great Stewart Granger) is a bastard,but Blanche( a majestic Valerie Hobson) is akin to him,because,at the beginning of the movie,she's a governess,and only marriage can provide her with a place in the sun;but her husband is probably impotent :here the writers use a metaphor.his father wants him to show his authority over their valuable property,that is to say to be a man.At the beginning of the movie,Blanche is a go-getter,but as soon as she meets Thorn,her fate is sealed,she reacts to events ,she no longer initiates them.Ultimately,she will try to stop the impending disaster ,but what she does finally backfires on herself and turns it into a final Thorn victory.Thorn is much more complex than he appears at first sight:actually he should own the property and he sees the Fury family as impostors;his attitude with animals makes us side with him for a while.Then,when he's about to win,he treats the servants as his predecessors used to do,and we discover his love for Blanche takes a back seat to his love for the domain.Then the lovers' fate is sealed.Color treatments are visually astounding :when we go from Blanche's deathbed to a flashback at the beginning,then the final pictures,hellish glimmering red glow ;Blanche's arrival in the castle,in a snowed up,misty landscape;the barns fire ,which seems to set ablaze the darkest night.Afterwards,Allégret's career straightly goes downhill."L'amant de Lady Chatterley" which I haven't seen but which he may have intended as "Blanche Fury II" ,poor Brigitte Bardot's vehicles ("en effeuillant la marguerite') or abysmal works(a segment of the horrible made up of sketches movie "les Parisiennes") .His brother Yves was much better ("Manèges" "Dédée d'Anvers" "une si jolie petite plage" "les Orgueilleux")."Blanche Fury" deserves to be seen anyway.