This romance is deeply moving, with Joan Fontaine making an unequal attachment painfully credible. The dialogue and music sometimes press too hard, but the camera gives her room to tell us more quietly.
Letter from an Unknown Woman is a moving romance about a devotion we would hesitate to encourage. It takes Lisa Berndle’s love for Stefan Brand seriously enough to let it be unreasonable, and Joan Fontaine makes that difficult position convincing. We recommend it warmly, with a warning that the film sometimes insists on feelings its actors have already made clear. It asks us to stay close to a woman whose certainty about love gives us plenty of reason to worry.
Joan Fontaine plays Lisa as someone whose attention has become fixed on one person. There is restraint in the performance, even when the writing is emphatic: she does not make every expression a request for sympathy. Louis Jourdan gives Stefan enough charm for the attachment to be comprehensible, and enough shallowness for it to concern us. Their performances make the unequal importance each gives the romance clear, without turning either character into someone we can easily dismiss.
The amusement-park date moved us more than we expected. Joan Fontaine makes Lisa’s pleasure in his company feel so complete that it becomes difficult to watch without worrying about her. The film allows the occasion its warmth, and that matters: a romance made entirely of warning signs would leave us wondering what she saw in him. For this stretch, we understand why spending time with Stefan could matter so much to Lisa.
Franz Planer’s photography keeps such concentrated feeling from becoming static. The tracking shots draw us into Lisa’s absorption, making the camera’s movement part of the pleasure of spending time with Stefan. The elaborate recreation of Vienna helps too: we can understand why someone might become carried away by romance in these surroundings. The decoration is lavish, but the film keeps bringing our attention back to the people, and to how little Stefan appears to understand Lisa.
Ted J. Kent’s editing gives the performances time to develop, with a pace that feels unhurried rather than slow. Across 87 minutes, the film has room for warmth as well as unhappiness, and its patience helps us attend to Lisa instead of merely anticipating the next misfortune. Daniele Amfitheatrof’s music is more insistent. It helps sustain the romantic feeling, but there are passages where we would rather listen to the actors without quite so much encouragement to be moved.
Howard E. Koch’s screenplay has a related weakness: some of its rhetoric tells us how much is at stake after the performances have made it plain. There is also a limit to how long Lisa’s devotion can serve as our principal way of understanding her. Joan Fontaine supplies enough feeling to keep us interested in the woman, but we sometimes wanted the writing to give her more room beyond loving Stefan. Those reservations matter, even in a film that makes the attachment this believable.
As a romantic melodrama, it asks for patience with a heroine who does not protect herself as we might wish. It earns that patience through Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan and the careful attention paid to the unevenness of their relationship. We would not choose it for an evening of reassuring romance. See it when there is time afterwards to disagree about Lisa, and about how much understanding Stefan deserves.
