Although it has thematic links with Jamaica Inn and a Cornish setting, Frenchman's Creek has never seemed a typical Du Maurier work to me. It has a more Mills & Boon/Barbara Cartland feel to it than the gothic masterpieces she is rightly remembered for. This 1944 film version has some plusses to it though I didn't enjoy it as much as the British TV adaptation of 1998. The plusses are the sumptuous colour, a dash of swashbuckling and first and foremost, the cast. Joan Fontaine who'd already impressed mightily in Du Maurier's Rebecca in 1940 is strong here as Dona St Columb, combining vulnerability with impish humour and spiritedness. Arturo De Cordova does a good job as the French pirate she falls for though he did not become a major star in Hollywood and Cecil Kellaway is warm and droll as a household servant. Ralph Forbes also does good work as Fontaine's idle, drunken layabout of a husband, though he handles himself well with a sword. Also prominent in the supporting cast are Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, in their only appearance on screen together outside of their leading turns as Holmes and Watson in the Fox then Universal series of films. Rathbone is the villainous Lord Rockingham , who despite his prowess at fencing, doesn't get to use it here, though he has a spirited encounter with Fontaine in one of the film's highlights. Nigel Bruce brings his trademark sense of fun to the dunderheaded Lord Godolphin but is more of a comical rotter here than his usual endearing buffoon.
Review of Frenchman's Creek
