On loan to Fox, Joan Crawford delivers yet another tour-de-force performance (one of the greatest of her career) as the titular character, a successful Manhattan career woman caught in a love triangle with two men: the philandering Dan O’Mara (Dana Andrews) and widowed veteran Peter Lapham (Henry Fonda). Daisy Kenyon, much, much more than merely a Crawford vehicle, is a deep exploration of love and is refreshingly free from the usual Hollywood moralizing, instead offering a compassionate view of three wayward souls at a time when the nation was simultaneously confident in its immediate prospects yet questioning its overarching direction. “Perhaps Preminger does deserve the final kudos, because his elaborate mise-en-scène, the unprecedented screenplay (adapted by David Hertz, with a grown-up relationship with the real postwar world), and a cast at the height of its powers is made to cohere into a distinct vision that talks and walks and feels utterly unique. It’s a revelation.”—Michael Atkinson.

Genres: Drama