Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger, 1947)

There's a particular caveat one finds in David Bordwell's writing, one that always gives me pause. Bordwell observes that critics and theorists frequently trumpet this or that film as having some extraordinary aspect, without ever demonstrating that they fully comprehend the ordinary way that films of their era actually conducted the formal business under discussion. That is, how can we know what's really extraordinary without a solid background of banality against which to judge it? And by Bordwell's reckoning, very few observers are willing to spend the time watching all those perfectly ordinary Hollywood studio products to establish, absolutely, what the norm really was. I know I'm not.

Having said that, I can't shake the feeling that there is something highly unusual about Daisy Kenyon. Granted, I am no expert in 1940s Hollywood. But I do know that producer / director Otto Preminger had a reputation for pushing the envelope in terms of forcing the studios to tackle adult themes like sexuality, drug use, violence, and racial justice. So while I cannot be certain that other films from the era were treating adultery with scorn and moralism, I can nevertheless observe that Daisy Kenyon is bracing in its urbanity. The film accepts extramarital affairs as heartbreaking and emotionally unfulfilling, but withholds judgment against the people involved. There is human frailty, but there are no "homewreckers" in Daisy Kenyon.

Instead, there are three people with very credible, realistic weaknesses. Daisy (Joan Crawford) is a career woman of a certain age who is involved with a high-profile, married attorney, Dan (Dana Andrews), whose livelihood is entangled with his father-in-law's firm. Plus, he adores his daughters. He is simply too weak to break it off with his wife (Citizen Kane's Ruth Warrick), despite the obvious lovelessness of their union. Enter #3, a former military man by the name of Peter Lapham (Henry Fonda), a widower who is still not over his wife's accident or, it seems, the war. In the short time he has known Daisy, it is as though he has willed himself to love her, convinced that she is his last best shot for happiness. Daisy, caught in a trap of her own making, does not disagree.

Preminger is the anti-Sirk, taking what could be a melodramatic formula and tamping it down, having all three leads play the material more than straight. There's a sense of grit combined with deep melancholy, Dan's arrogance clashing with the damaged decency of Peter. Daisy, meanwhile, is a full-blooded desiring woman, driven repeatedly into Dan's arms by his sex appeal, despite not actually liking the son of a bitch all that much. Again, Preminger's film seems light years ahead of other Hollywood efforts of the era in its frank recognition that Daisy is a sexual being, the film or its characters never once looking askance at her for this.

Ultimately, Dan and Peter become what today we'd call "frenemies," in an open contest for Daisy's affection. This unconventionally civil gentlemen's agreement is unnerving, even a bit nauseating, to Daisy, as she is clearly becoming a token in a homosocial relationship, a chit or a medium of exchange. I couldn't help but think of the conclusion of Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun, when Maria discovers that her husband and her boss had cut a deal behind her back, rendering her own decisions moot. As it happens, Peter is biding his time, waiting for Dan to overshoot his mark. Still, it was only in the final moments that Daisy Kenyon felt beholden to its historical moment. Al things considered, wasn't she better off alone? But such an ending wasn't possible, especially for Crawford, still struggling to overcome the label of "box office poison."