One of the all-time classics, Otto Preminger’s 1947 melodrama “Daisy Kenyon,” is being released under a misnomer, as part of the “Fox Film Noir” collection, when in fact it is one of the most moving, troubled, and mysterious of movie romances. Preminger, however, spares the hearts and flowers and delivers a poisoned poem to the games of power that love conceals. Joan Crawford stars in the title role as a downtown fashion illustrator caught in a triangle between Peter Lapham (Henry Fonda), an introverted, inwardly wounded Army lifer, and Dan O’Mara (Dana Andrews), a high-flying corporate lawyer who is in turn caught between her and his wife and family on Park Avenue. The relationships are darkened by deception, hatred, and violence—physical and emotional—which Preminger sets against a sharp urban milieu of politics, money, and publicity (Walter Winchell and Leonard Lyons appear in a scene at the Stork Club), as well as by the ambient vestiges of the war effort. Preminger, who had a law degree, delivers magnificent courtroom drama; with his characteristic taste for ambiguity, he gives Fonda the strangest, most disturbing role of his career, perching him on the edge of quiet madness. Come to think of it, if the film-noir style—in addition to resulting from the imported expressionism of European émigré directors (including Preminger)—is largely the embodiment of a collective post-traumatic stress disorder of a nation that knew no healing beside victory, “Daisy Kenyon” could be Exhibit A. (David Denby discusses the film in his recent overview of Preminger’s career.)—Richard Brody
DVD of the Week: Daisy Kenyon
