The Constant Nymph (1943)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

Edmund Goulding

Writers:

Basil Dean (play)
Margaret Kennedy (novel) (play)

Release Date:

23 October 1944 (Sweden)

Genre:

Drama | Music | Romance

Tagline:

He tried to divide his heart and broke theirs.

Plot:

Fourteen-year-old Tessa is hopelessly in love with handsome composer Lewis Dodd, a family friend. Lewis adores Tessa...

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman | Orchestral Music Score | Based On Novel | Based On Play

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Charles Boyer	...	Lewis Dodd
Joan Fontaine	...	Tessa Sanger
Brenda Marshall	...	Toni Sanger
Alexis Smith	...	Florence Creighton
Charles Coburn	...	Charles Churchill
Dame May Whitty	...	Lady Longborough
Peter Lorre	...	Fritz Bercovi
Jean Muir	...	Kate Sanger
Joyce Reynolds	...	Paula Sanger
Eduardo Ciannelli	...	Roberto
Montagu Love	...	Albert Sanger
Janine Crispin	...	Marie
Doris Lloyd	...	Miss Hamilton
Joan Blair	...	Lina Kamaroff
Crauford Kent	...	Thorpe

Runtime:

112 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Finland:S | Sweden:Btl

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Alfred Hitchcock was considered for directing this film. Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville was one of the writers of The Constant Nymph (1928) 1928 version.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Between Two Worlds: Erich Wolfgang Korngold (2001) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Tomorrow

Margaret Kennedy's first novel, Korngold's best music

At the end of WWI Margaret Kennedy, a rather plain young girl, was seen sitting in the Oxford University library looking off into the distance thinking about what her first novel should be about. She rather liked the music of Gustav Holst whose "The Planets" had catapulted his name from complete anonymity to recent fame. She thought that she could write that no Englishman would believe that someone born in Hammersmith could ever be a famous composer; she decided to call him Albert Sanger. The novel was a sellout in the 1920's, and it was filmed three times, the 1943 version being arguably the best. "Sanger's Circus", his collection of children, wives, and mistresses (in sequence, thankfully), which served as a center for avant garde musical folk near Innsbruck, was well depicted in the film. Lewis Dodd, a struggling young composer, talented, self-absorbed to the point of ignoring everything but his music, was well played. Joan Fontaine, regrettably, was hardly fourteen when she tackled the role of Tessa, though she did make a rather toothsome young girl. Korngold's music was simple and effective, though it bore his mark of romantic Vienna rather more than the atonal modernism that Dodd would very likely have employed at that time. The tragedy of Tessa's love and her death due to a locked window she struggled with made this story hard to forget. Eric Korngold probably made more money in his Hollywood years than did all the classical composers who preceded him, and this was his most appealing production.