Daisy Kenyon

Otto Preminger delivers an uncommonly intelligent “women’s picture” with noirish shadings in this tale of a New York career girl caught between two men. Joan Crawford is scary intense in the title role, with Dana Andrews and Henry Fonda excellent and complex as the men she must choose between. Though the premise of a triangle with a big-shot-lawyer married lover and a shaken war-scarred veteran looking for marriage may be standard issue, its treatment is suspenseful and even-handed -- one is never sure how it will turn out, or even how one wants it to turn out. The dialogue and situations are witty, mature, and open-ended. This might qualify as a lost masterpiece. (1947, dvd, n.) *8*