Frenchman's Creek (1944)

In mid 17th century England, fed up with her husband's (Ralph Forbes) antics and the unwanted attention of his lecherous friend (Basil Rathbone), a married noblewoman (Joan Fontaine) leaves him and with her two children goes to the Cornish coast. There she falls under the spell of a French pirate (Arturo De Cordova). Four years after her breakthrough role in the film version of Daphne Du Maurier's REBECCA, Fontaine takes on a different Du Maurier heroine. Feisty, adventurous and loving unwisely. Despite the pirates, the film is not so much a swashbuckler as what they used to call a "bodice ripper", a titillating Harlequin like romance. Curiously, the film seems to think nothing of Fontaine ignoring her two children as she risks her life and goes on a thrill raid with the pirates for a few days. Fontaine looks gorgeous in three strip Technicolor and her Raoul Pene Du Bois period costumes but it's a pity she didn't have a more charismatic leading man. There was a brief attempt to make the rather bland Mexican actor a star in Hollywood in the 1940s but the public wasn't biting. Directed by Mitchell Leisen. The Oscar winning art direction is courtesy of Hans Dreier and Ernst Fegte and the score by Victor Young. With Nigel Bruce and Cecil Kellaway, not an Irish imp but a French manservant here.