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Frenchman's
Creek
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 Rock sees the way Dona looks at the pirate and suspects they are lovers. |
 One of the pirates forces Rock to an upstairs room. |
Frenchman's Creek won an Academy Award for art direction and set design.
 "Frenchman's Creek" with Joan Fontaine and
Arturo de CordovaA good costume entertainment, lavishly
produced and photographed in Technicolor. It should do exceptionally
good business because of the widely-read novel on which the story is
based, and of the popularity of Joan Fontaine. Set in the
seventeenth century, the story is an adventurous romantic drama
revolving around the escapades of a beautiful but unhappily married
aristocrat, who falls in love with a swashbuckling French pirate.
Pictures dealing with pirates generally have more excitement than
there is in this one, nevertheless, it has a fair quota of thrills,
including sword duels, the hijacking of a merchantman, and all the
other swaggering doings identified with pictures of this type. It
does, however, have many slow spots, and some judicious cutting
would help matters considerably. Joan Fontaine makes an enticing
heroine, enacting her role with what appears to be a tongue-in-cheek
exuberance. Arturo de Cordova, as the pirate chief, looks more
dashing than he actually is. Basil Rathbone is ludicrously leering
as the foppish villain, whom Joan murders in a fight for her honor.
Cecil Kellaway, as the understanding servant, is the best of the
supporting cast. Because of the sex situations, the picture is
unsuitable for children: Tiring of London society, of her foppish husband (Ralph Forbes), and of the persistent attentions of Basil Rathbone, Forbes' best friend, Joan Fontaine, an aristocrat, takes her two children and leaves for her estate on the Cornish coast. Arriving there, she finds that the estate had been used as headquarters by a pirate gang, led by Arturo de Cordova, whose raids on estates nearby had raised the ire of the Cornish aristocrats. Joan meets the pirate chief when he brings his ship into a hidden anchorage in a creek nearby. Both are attracted to each other, and Joan, in an adventurous mood, dresses as a cabin boy and accompanies him on a foray. Meanwhile her husband and Rathbone come to the estate, summoned by the Cornish gentry, who believed the pirate's hideout was in the vicinity, and needed help to capture him. At a dinner, with Joan presiding as hostess, the aristocrats lay their plans for the capture. Joan's shrewd methods to delay them, so that the pirate might escape, are interrupted by de Cordova's daring entrance with a group of his best swordsmen. He disarms the aristocrats, locks them in a room, and bids Joan goodbye. The aristocrats manage to free themselves and give chase. Rathbone remains behind and tries to force his unwelcome attentions on Joan. Rather than submit, she kills him. Meanwhile de Cordova is captured as he successfully holds off the aristocrats to gain time for his crew's escape. The aristocrats make plans to hang him, but Joan effects his escape through a ruse. De Cordova begs Joan to sail away with him, but she realizes her duty to her children, and chooses to remain at the estate. Talbot Jennings wrote the screen play from the book by Daphne du Maurier, David Lewis produced it, and Mitchell Leisen directed it. B.G. DeSylva was the executive producer. The cast includes Nigel Bruce and others.
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Variety reported that the film cost more than three
million dollars to produce. In spite of the high production cost, Frenchman's
Creek was a
commercial success, at least in the big cities. The Film Daily (
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Comments from small-town theatre owners:
"The most spectacular and colorful flop of the season."
"It is amazing how much money is squandered on trite screen material; the
production on this alone must have reached well into the millions. The
finished picture is not down the ally of small towns and I doubt if the
rank and file patron is going to get excited about it. I heard some
complaints about its length. ... Personally, I liked Mr. Rathbone better
than anything else in the picture. He did full justice to his villainous
role."
 Frenchman's CreekAUDIENCE SLANT: (Family) Romance in the grand manner, this silken presentation of a story about love, piracy and the frivolous pursuits of wealthy 17th century English gentry is "escapist" entertainment from start to finish; has moments of melodrama and interludes of quite adventurous romantic intrigue to assure most favorable receptions by the women. BOX-OFFICE SLANT: Star's and costar's names plus spectacular production, plus wide readership of novel set it up as a big draw, as strong (or stronger) for smaller situations as for metropolitan first-runs. Plot: As escape from the foppish society of her husband and his friend's insolent advances, Lady Dona St. Columb (Joan Fontaine) leaves London, takes her two children to the St. Columb country estate on the Cornish coast. She finds that a notorious pirate, known as the Frenchman, has been using the home occasionally. Intrigued by the adventure promised, she meets the pirate, whom the entire countryside is attempting to capture and promises to hang. There is great mutual attraction, and Lady Dona essays the dangerous adventure of accompanying, even aiding, the Frenchman's capture of a ship owned by a Cornishman. This leads to a climax in which her husband, his friend Rockingham and leading landowners gather at her home to effect capture of the Frenchman. There is swordplay and before the Frenchman escapes, she kills Rockingham when he again forces his attentions on her and bids a farewell to the man she loves in order to fulfill her duties to her two children. Comment: One of the most elaborate, ambitious and
expensive productions ever to be given to a straight romance (devoid
of historical or social significance) has been contrived by
Paramount for a Daphne du Maurier novel that rated as a best-seller,
and the picture delivered on the screen is one to prove a box-office
success in the over-all sense because this seems an offering of even
stronger pull in the smaller situations than at the first-runs. It
is costume drama (set, incidentally, in a period when the costumery
was grotesquely elaborate and far more gorgeous than attractive),
but you can look for none of the aversion that in former years made
costume pictures sheer box-office poison. For here is Joan Fontaine
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 Rockingham accuses Dona of loving the pirate. |
 "If you hadn't left London, it would have been me [you made love to]!" |
"Basil Rathbone manages some capital moments."
 "Frenchman's Creek"To get going with "Frenchman's Creek" by remarking it is out of this world is to get going with a very literal remark. The place is England, the time is the 17th century, and its piratical events have nothing at all to do with the kind of events currently under way in Western Europe and the Pacific. escapism is not only the key, it is the whole structure. In these days of widespread reaction against pictures concerning war, the point can be highly important. Probably is, too. There are others. This attraction, made with an open pocketbook by producer David Lewis and director Mitchell Leisen, is compounded from a best-seller by Daphne du Maurier. It is also the first pirate picture since Tyrone Power swaggered his way through "The Black Swan" two years ago. By that approach, strong values not available to ticket buyers from any other current direction are suggested. Plus-value on its ledger is an excellent performance by Joan
Fontaine who registers so beautifully in color that she might well
be regarded as one of Hollywood's luminaries fro whom this process
could have been conceived. As the lady with an urge, she
out-distances the rest of the cast by a seven-league boot or so. As
the manly one who recognizes both a lady and an urge, Arturo de
Cordova cuts a dashing and romantic figure and makes understandable
why Miss Fontaine almost succumbs to the salt, the wind, the spray,
etc. But not quite. In fact, there is considerable of that urge
business around. from the outset, Miss Fontaine, whose fictional
name is as fancy as Dona St. Columb, is hankering for the romance
which her husband, Harry, does not provide. When she leaves London
for their Cornish home and shortly thereafter meets de Cordova, a
Robin-Hood type of high seas marauder, she becomes quite a willing
wanderer from hearth, home and children. Where Harry is blundering
and boorish, Jean Benoit Aubrey And so it is, they fall madly in
love. The heroine accompanies her pirate-hero on an expedition. She
protects his interests, meaning his safety, when the squires of the
county band together to remove him from the scene. She kills Lord
Rockingham "Frenchman's Creek" is a decided
showpiece, a sort of concerto on celluloid. Its production
investiture is magnificent. Its photography, at the hands of George
Barnes, is arresting. Its settings are big. Its seascapes and its
shipscapes Dramatically, the enterprise doesn't match. Those doublets, wigs and trappings which are 17th century get in the way of story and characters, a common result in this type is idyllized romantic drama. What comedy is around lumbers and creaks and the attraction would move faster toward its goal in less footage. Incidents are contrived for convenience, not for believability. Nevertheless, it's a show. In point of scale, it's a big show. In point of offering a different kind of romance, lacking competition at this juncture, there is advantage. If make-believe of a far-off day in a tapestry of long, long ago and a pirate yarn are big box-office, this attraction, which makes its bow at the Rivoli, New York Wednesday morning, is it. Other principals in the cast are Ralph Forbes, Nigel Bruce and Cecil Kellaway. Red Kann
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"Rathbone ... was excellent as Lord Rockingham. The scene
in which he confronts Dona is definitely the most effective moment in the
picture."