Ivy (1947)

In the "Noir by Gaslight" series at the Criterion Channel this month: Joan Fontaine goes bad in a great way

(The magnificent Ivy, deemed “stone-cold noir” by none other than Eddie Muller himself, is on the Criterion Channel as part of the “Noir by Gaslight” series, and it can and should be watched right now. This is a Siren post from around 2008, spruced up and trimmed of dead links and such. Enjoy, and do see Ivy.)

"It's a perfect fascination, my attachment to that girl. If she were to poison me, I would forgive her."

 —Emile L'Angelier's description of his lover Madeleine Smith, from testimony at Madeleine's 1857 trial for poisoning him with arsenic.

There is nothing like a nice solid domestic poisoning case to get the Siren feeling all’s right with the world. So she was predisposed to like Ivy, the 1947 film noir about a poison-wielding Edwardian belle, even had it not starred Joan Fontaine at the peak of her beauty and talent, or been directed by Sam Wood and produced by William Cameron Menzies, who probably contributed a great deal to the film's design. 

Furthermore, it was lensed by Russell Metty; scored by the same man who did Letter from an Unknown Woman, Daniele Amfitheatrof; written by sometime Hitchcock collaborator Charles Bennett; and the costumes were by Orry-Kelly, who set off Fontaine's features with wide-brimmed hats and fetching veils. All that, plus Herbert Marshall.

It was, in short, 99 minutes of ecstasy, and the Siren felt the same way as David Cairns, "as if someone had cut me open and inserted a big cake made of happiness.” (The Siren stole some of these screen caps from David, with his kind permission.) 

Why does the Siren like a good poisoning case, you may well be too afraid to ask? It's psychologically interesting, that's why. Poison is said to be a woman's method, stealthy and nonviolent. If you aim to mimic a debilitating illness, or if you just don't happen to have a clutch-your-heart-and-keel-over toxin sitting around in the medicine cabinet, poison is also exceptionally nasty. Poison requires a murderess to eye the pain-wracked victim, and muse not only, "Young man, I think you're dying," but also, "Time for another dose!" Poison is Madeleine Smith in 1857 Glasgow, listening to the agonized moans of the lover who unwisely got in her way, and with a smile of womanly commiseration, handing him another cup of cocoa. 

Madeleine, in fact, is the ne plus ultra of female poisoners, remorseless and beautiful, so intoxicating that as Emile L'Angelier lay dying, and maybe knowing why, the closest he came to incriminating her was when he wondered aloud, "I cannot think why I was so unwell after getting that coffee and chocolate from her.” 

L'Angelier had been blackmailing Madeleine. He had threatened to expose their torrid physical affair just as Madeleine was about to marry a rich merchant. The day after Emile told Madeleine he would reveal the letters that proved she'd lost her virginity to him, Madeleine was spotted buying arsenic at the chemist's. For "her complexion."

The verdict against Madeleine Smith was one count not guilty, and on another count the uniquely Scottish "Not Proven.” She got the money, she got her merchant, and like Lizzie Borden, her sister in homicide and dubious verdicts, Madeleine Smith led a blameless life into her old age. 

So far as we know. 

Ivy is based on a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, a deliciously fun pop-novelist who the Siren would love to see revived, but that's for another day. The story has many echoes of Madeleine, but the differences make the plot and Fontaine's title character all the more irresistible.

Ivy's psychology also diverges from that of the sensual Madeleine. As played by Fontaine—and the Siren ranks this among Joan's best performances—Ivy gives every indication of not much liking sex at all. She endures the caresses and pleadings of her millstone husband and discarded lover as one might absently pat an overeager Pekingese. When Ivy goes after rich, unsuspecting (wasn't he always, poor lamb) Herbert Marshall, she displays herself like a piece of Wedgwood. Not something to be seized with vulgar hands, but rather to be wrapped in tissue paper and taken home to a proper setting in the nicest room in the house. 

It isn't men who bring a flash to Ivy's eyes and a flush to her cheekbones, but mansions, large boats, feathered hats and, most of all, spangled handbags with cunning secret compartments. 

Sam Wood hooked the Siren from scene one, as Ivy, in one of the cloud-like white dresses she wears through most of the movie, climbs the stairs to a back apartment, where Una O'Connor awaits to tell the future. Now as we all know, no one in a movie ever goes to a fortune teller to be told "I've looked deep into your future, my child, and everything is just ducky." No, they go to have the fortune teller start with "I see a journey" or "I see a dark stranger" or, in this case, "I see someone rich"—then break off, rear back, and flinch with dread at a ghastly presentiment. 

This O'Connor does, and Fontaine also does her duty, as the customer who shrugs off bad news as a supernatural false alarm, crosses the psychic's palms with silver, and hastens off to her fate. 

Ivy is married to Jervis Lexton, a happy-go-lucky layabout played by an unexpectedly marvelous Richard Ney. Jervis once had some money, but Ivy ran through that in short order. Now they live in dingy rooms and try to live well on nothing a year. Whatever motivated Ivy to marry him—impulse? infatuation? to get him to quit asking?—is long gone. As Jervis yammers away about how he loves her, and they'll get by all right, and he wouldn't dream of leaving, Ivy gently pulls at her collar as though she can't breathe. The Siren loved this Fontaine gesture so much that she reversed the DVD three times to watch it again. 

Our Ivy also has an ex-lover who can't get over her, a noble slum doctor named Roger Gretorex (Patric Knowles). Perhaps Ivy once saw Gretorex as an escape, but she found out he lives in a shabby slum neighborhood and is always treating injured slum children and what-not and my dear, it's just too, too dreary. What Ivy needs is a nice multimillionaire, like Una O'Connor promised her. Soon he appears, Miles Rushworth, played by Herbert Marshall.

(Spoiler alert! The Siren strongly suggests that if you haven’t seen Ivy, you stop reading RIGHT HERE and come back to finish reading once you have!)

Marshall and Fontaine play two arrestingly gorgeous scenes, including one at a ball where Ivy asks Rushworth to dance, and Rushworth says yes, in that lovely voice of Marshall's. And, frankly, that had the Siren in a tizzy, since World War I hero Herbert Marshall was (probably) the only man with an artificial leg ever to become a major star. But Ivy and Rushworth get waylaid before they reach the dance floor, and have an intimate conversation as fireworks go off in the background—not subtle, but visually it's a treat. More beautiful still is a scene on Rushworth's yacht. As a thunderstorm comes up, their kiss is shot in silhouette.

Then there's the scene where Ivy, showing more lust than she does at any other point, spies an expensive antique handbag in a window and deftly manipulates Rushworth into buying it for her. The lovely little purse has a clasp that opens to reveal a small hollow that's simply perfect for... golly, rouge would fit! or perfumed talc! or maybe face powder! Gosh, what else comes in powdered form?

The handbag once belonged to Marie Antoinette, the saleslady tells them, but surely this is a script oversight. L'Autrichienne did play milkmaid while peasants starved, but she didn't run around dosing them with arsenic. Perhaps Lowndes and Bennett were thinking of Madame de Montespan, another of Ivy's lethal sorority. Anyway, handbag in hand, what's this that Ivy spies next? What’s that on the label?

That's the ticket! So considerate of Dr. Gretorex to have that lying around his office, just as Rushworth leaves for South Africa and Ivy realizes her husband can't take a hint. The poison is coyly unnamed (due probably to some Production Code stricture) but trust the Siren, it's arsenic, once used to treat psoriasis as well as syphilis, which is presumably why Gretorex keeps it in stock. (As though the latter diagnosis weren't enough of a problem 100 years ago, nooooo, they also gave you arsenic—yikes.) Further evidence will come later in the form of a doctor who checks Jervis's fingernails for the telltale white lines left by gradual arsenic poisoning. 

The moment Fontaine steals the poison is played with her face in shadow, her motivations all in the delicate way she opens the latch on her precious purse. Later, when she's fixing Jervis a fatal drink of brandy and water, Wood keeps Ivy's hands just out of frame, as though sharing her conviction that it isn't really murder, she's just doing what a woman must, if she wants to be kept in style.

Gretorex tries to see Ivy and winds up making an inadvertent house call on the dying Jervis, who's complaining about one hell of a hangover. Those factors enable Ivy, who's nothing if not opportunistic, to try to pin the murder on her ex-lover. Here's the best thing about Fontaine in Ivy: As David also notes, it's such a delectable twist on her performance in Suspicion. In that unjustly maligned Hitchcock outing, where Fontaine was terrific, she's the upper-crust, tormented, tremulous wife of a no-good (but non-poisoning) husband. Here, Fontaine herself is the upper-crust, tremulous poisoner, with all those genteel mannerisms turned lethal. 

Watch Fontaine's Ivy trying to maneuver her husband into divorcing her, delicately arranging herself on a sofa and moaning that she is no good for him. Catch her exasperation as this impossible sap insists that no, dearest, he simply wouldn't dream of it. See Ivy look at Jervis dying and feel a fleeting bit of pity; "Pain should be quick," she reflects. Then, just like Madeleine, Ivy gives her victim another dose, as though he's a suffering parakeet. 

Ivy, in bed after Jervis finally expires, shrinks back against the pillows as she's questioned by a gruff detective, as Lina in Suspicion cowered in bed with her eyes glued to a glowing glass of milk. Later, when Ivy realizes the law, in the form of Sir Cedric Hardwicke and his eyebags, may be catching on to her, her eyelids flutter with repressed impatience at this lack of cooperation. It's like she's turning a key in a lock, and the wretched thing simply won't open.

Joan Fontaine was born on Oct. 22, 1917. There could be no better way for us all to celebrate her birthday next month than by rediscovering Ivy.