Dir: Mitchell Leison | Cast: Joan Fontaine Basil Rathbone Arturo de Cordova | US Drama
At over $3m Paramount’s most expensive production to date, this extravagant folly was a triumph of production design and deservedly won an Academy Award for its set decoration.
David Shipman later observed that “Joan Fontaine was never more beautiful than in the Technicolor Frenchman’s Creek'” and she certainly shows an unaccustomed spirit, prompting James Agee – who considered the film an improvement on the novel – to observe that she displays a “prettiness and vivacity which I had not suspected of her”; notably the way her eyes widen in anticipation when her pirate lover promises that if they are ever captured “We’ll hang together from the same gallows!” @RichardChatten