Blanche Fury

Everybody dies in the end. So seems to be the moral lesson of Marc Allégret’s Blanche Fury, a sedate and moody Victorian tale of romantic suspense complete with self-possessed governess and moody Byronic (anti-)hero entangled in a vast country estate. Unsuccessful at the box office and often forgotten today, Blanche Fury was intended as a more serious variation on the Gainsborough period films, its pace languid at times but heaving toward a dramatic, deadly final act. When the orphaned young woman Blanche (Valerie Hobson) is called upon by her distant, wealthy uncle Simon (Walter Fitzgerald) to serve as governess for his granddaughter Lavinia (Susanne Gibbs), Blanche accepts the position and finds herself attracted to Phillip Thorn (Stewart Granger), the embittered caretaker and illegitimate son of the former owner of the estate who left the property to Simon and his family. When his lawyer Samuel Calamy (Ernest Jay) notifies Thorn that there’s no legal way for him to claim the estate for himself, his desire to possess it only intensifies, manifesting as a romance with Blanche despite her recent marriage to her milquetoast cousin Lawrence (Michael Gough). The relationship will instigate a more violent strategy for obtaining the estate, leading to madness and tragedy. Filmed in vibrant color, the film showcases both panoramic views of sunny English hillsides and shadowy interiors in which isolated, regal colors (a blue wall, a red dress) pop off the screen. Like so many noirs, Blanche Fury unfolds as a single, film-long flashback, which Allégret frames with transitional sequences in which crimson waves swirl around the camera lens like ropes of blood.