Louis Jourdan could make a shallow man worth watching without asking us to excuse him. His romantic polish was useful, but the parts that allowed some weakness beneath it gave him more to do.
Fi1m perspective
Watch how little Louis Jourdan has to insist on Stefan Brand's appeal in Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948). Joan Fontaine's Lisa is fixed on him, while he gives the romance far less importance. Jourdan lets us understand her attraction without pretending that she has chosen someone who deserves so much of her attention. It is a fine performance in a romance that gives charm some uncomfortable consequences.
There is a useful restraint in the pairing: Fontaine does not keep asking for sympathy, and Jourdan does not make Stefan so empty that her devotion becomes ridiculous. We were moved by the unequal attachment, because both actors make it possible to understand why Lisa persists while worrying about what she sees in him. The dialogue and music sometimes press the emotion too hard. In Ophüls's film, the performances leave us more room to think than those emphatic passages do.
Hollywood had an obvious use for that elegance, and it did not always give Jourdan enough else to play. The Paradine Case (1947), his first Hollywood film, and Madame Bovary (1949) belong to the early run; Gigi (1958) gave his singing and light-comedy timing a place. The sophisticated French lover became a recurring assignment, including in Can-Can (1960). Stefan benefits from having weaknesses that Jourdan can let us see, rather than simply being required to look suitable for romance.
Count Dracula (1977) offered a more substantial television role, before the later villains of Swamp Thing (1982) and Octopussy (1983), in which he played Kamal Khan. The move towards menace gave him another use for the polished voice and bearing, though genre supporting parts did not consistently make full use of his abilities. We would start with Letter from an Unknown Woman, where there is so much to question in the man he plays. Choose it for an evening when a romance need not be reassuring.
Biography
Louis Jourdan (born Louis Robert Gendre) was a French film and television actor. He trained at the École Dramatique in Paris and began his career in French cinema in the early 1940s before moving to Hollywood.
He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947) and played Stefan Brand in Max Ophüls's Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948). Later roles included Gaston Lachaille in Gigi (1958) and Kamal Khan in Octopussy (1983). He also appeared in television series such as Columbo and played the title role in the 1977 BBC production Count Dracula.
