Foxfire

Moviecut—Foxfire

Beautifully photographed in S. Arizona and the stars provide plenty of heat. I didn't think The Code allowed for sharing double beds in 1955.

Stars Jane Russell and Jeff Chandler. When upper crust caucasian girl Amanda falls fast for engineer Jonathan Dartland, there are issues to be discussed, since Jonathan is part apache. some really dramatic sunsets right at the beginning. Amanda is headstrong, and proposes right away. Dartland has an idea of the conflict they are in for, and is hesitant. and the local ladies are all wearing prim and proper dresses, while Amanda struts into town wearing a more revealing top, with bare shoulders and everything. and no hat! and the locals watch as Hugh ( dan duryea) pays more attention to Amanda than Dartland. jealousy. flirting. head games. amanda keeps trying to cozy up to Dartland, but he keeps pulling away, making things harder between them. and then amanda learns more about the apache culture, and how Dartland had thought the traditions were supposed to work. can they hold it together? Directed by Joseph Pevney, who made films from 1950 -1960, and then was king of the tv series. original novel by Anya Seton. Oh, and the title Foxfire comes from the glow of the rotting timbers near a mine, and is quite dangerous. according to Dartland, the miner. it's pretty good. some plot issues, but certainly entertaining.

New York socialite Amanda Dartland (Jane Russell) is stranded when her car breaks down. Jonathan Dartland (Jeff Chandler) and his drunken friend Dr. Hugh Slater stop to pick up the beauty. She is dismissive of the local natives and he hides his half-Indian roots at first. His mother is Princess Saba of the Apaches. I turned around and the leads are suddenly getting married. There is no dating drama. There is no breakup and no makeup drama. It's missing all the good parts. I like the start where she's a bit of a racist and he's a bit of a stiff. Their relationship should be given more time to grow before they rush into the marriage. I don't really like them together so their melodrama is less appealing. She's high maintenance and he's too angry. Russell's appeal has always been her figure. In this one, her spunkiness adds some appeal but there is no appeal with his brooding internalized anger. The pairing could be so much better if they could dial back the frustration.

The best thing about the movie is its glorious color images. What iconography! The hulking presence of the sun-darkened Jeff Chandler, the prismatic vibrancy of Jane Russell's wardrobe, the stunning majesty of her pale bosom, that candy-apple red 1954 Ford convertible, the canary yellow Jeep. The rest of the movie is a snore. Jane Russel, with a snooty Eastern mother, meets and immediately marries the shy, reticent half-Apache Chandler. Since boyhood he has learned never to cry out for help. But Russell is compelled to nurturance. How could she not be, with that equipment? So it devolves into a good-natured soap opera in which a husband hides secret from his wife and she snoops into his affairs, makes a nuisance of herself, and almost runs off with the dipso doctor before the inevitable mine explosion brings them together for good. Nobody really seems to have cared much about the quality of the film, which is just as well. It's probably Jane Russell's most loose-limbed and appealing performance. She was never much of an actress but seems to have been a nice, unpretentious lady. Chandler warbles the title song over the credits. He does not sing in the rest of the movie, nor does he do much of anything else. Celia Lovsky is the most hilarious Indian mother you can imagine.

Foxfire is the bioluminescence created by certain species of fungi present in decaying wood, a phenomenon which plays a minor part in this film. (It does not involve heat or combustion, so the reference in the lyrics of the title song to "the foxfire burning" is not strictly accurate). The story is derived from a work by the historical novelist Anya Seton, although "Foxfire" is one of her more contemporary novels, being set in the 1930s, only some twenty years before it was published in 1951. The film-makers, however, abandoned the period setting and updated it to the 1950s- the film was made in 1955- as well as altering some of the details of Seton's story. The story is essentially a modern-day Western with the action taking place in the Arizona desert. Amanda Lawrence, a wealthy heiress, falls in love with Jonathan Dartland ("Dart"), a mining engineer, and marries him after a whirlwind courtship. (In the novel Amanda's family have lost their fortune in the Wall Street Crash, but this detail is omitted from the film). Amanda's snobbish mother is not at all pleased by this development, and is even less pleased when she learns that Dart is of mixed race, being the son of a white college professor and an Apache princess. There are two main strands to the plot. The first involves Dart's search for a lost gold mine, which he believes still holds a rich vein of gold, and his attempts to interest the directors of his company in his project. The second deals with the strains in the marriage of Dart and Amanda, strains caused partly by his obsession with his work, partly by rumours of an affair between Amanda and his doctor friend Hugh Slater, and partly by cultural differences between the two. Dart's father died when he was a boy and he was raised by his mother according to the traditions of her people, which means that he finds it difficult to express emotion. (It would appear that Apaches- especially men- place a great value on stoicism and on maintaining a stiff upper lip). Not all these issues are well resolved, particularly the Amanda/Hugh subplot. For most of the film it is implied that the rumours of an affair between them are merely idle gossip, especially as Hugh- physically unattractive and a self-pitying drunkard- seems so much less appealing as a lover than the manly and ruggedly handsome Dart. Later developments, however, suggest that there may have been something in the rumours after all. (Possibly the screenwriters were hamstrung by the Production Code, which tended to insist that no woman could be portrayed as an adulteress unless she was also an out-and-out villainess). Overall, however, this was a film I enjoyed. The cast are well chosen; Jeff Chandler is good as the rather stiff, obsessive figure of Dart, and Jane Russell looks stunning, as she normally did. (Mind you, in a couple of scenes even Russell is overshadowed by a young Mara Corday, one of the few actresses in fifties Hollywood with an even more spectacular figure than her own). After his success in "Broken Arrow", Chandler seemed to specialise in playing Native Americans, even though he had no Indian blood. (He was actually a Jewish New Yorker). There is a particularly dignified performance from Celia Lovsky as Dart's mother, who despite her royal blood and distinguished ancestry (her father was a much respected chief) is now reduced to working as a tour guide for the benefit of gawping tourists. Her explanations of the Apache culture in which her son has grown up do much to save Amanda's marriage. "Foxfire" could easily have become little more than a cheap romance. What saves it from that fate is its sensitive treatment of its key theme of cultural differences, a treatment which makes it stand out from many of the standard "women's pictures" of the fifties. 7/10

Hot-blooded potboiler with facetious, flirtatious undermining has New York socialite Jane Russell vacationing at Arizona spa near Tucson; a flat tire brings her together with worldly half-breed Jeff Chandler (Apache on his mother's side, white on his professor father's). Their whirlwind marriage seems like a good idea at first, until Russell learns her engineer husband is beset with prejudice and Indian superstitions at the mine, that the tippling small town doctor wants her for his own, and the gossipy neighbors have their own version of a snobbish pecking order. Entertaining star-vehicle doesn't do much with Dan Duryea's role as the drunken doc (he keeps popping up unannounced, and the finale leaves his character stranded); however, Russell--with her incredulous witticisms--and strong, sexy Chandler are a good match (no big romantic sparks, though with lots of chemistry). The picture doesn't always add up on a logical level, yet emotionally it is intriguing. Handsome production (with rich color), unobtrusive direction, nice theme song co-written by Chandler and Henry Mancini. **1/2 from ****

I started watching "Foxfire" a few days ago on the Encore Western Channel and I became caught up in the story and the beauty of the Technicolor and the location scenes in the desert.I made a DVD of the movie for my collection and I just got through watching the movie from the very beginning to the end.I had never watched a Jane Russell film before and I am impressed with her acting talent and her incredible beauty.I had seen her and Marilyn Monroe in a few minutes of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" a few years ago and I was not that impressed with the movie.I know that Howard Hughes thought that Jane Russell was special.He was right.Jeff Chandler as the half Apache Native American man was terrific too.I felt that Jeff Chandler was the perfect man for the part.The scenery and Technicolor are magnificent.I give this unknown film a major thumbs up!I have this movie.

This is one of 3 best movies Russell ever made: the other being gentleman prefer blonds with Marilyn and His Kind of Woman with Robert Mitchem...she is so beautiful, charming and totally a match of these two co-stars it is a pleasure to see them. Chandler is wonderful, what a shame dying at 42 from a bungled spinal operation(blood poisoning), or they would have surely made more movies together..check it out, a true spark between them...and ditto for she and Robert Mitchem in His Kind of Love 1955..they became lifelong friends until his death, Great interview by Robt Osbourne on Turner with the two of them. Louise ONeill

I have just seen this film for the first time on TV. I thought it was a little gem of a film, with excellent roles filled by Jeff Chandler and Jane Russell. The authentic settings in Arizona also helped to make this an enjoyable and convincing film. I am a particular fan of films made in the 1950's and 1960's which I regard as the golden years, when films contained real 'stars' and this one certainly fits the bill for me. I am just surprised that I have not come across this film before. I can recommend it as an ideal film to watch on a wet afternoon. Pity it is not available on DVD. The storyline also deals sensitively with racial prejudices arising from relationships between white people and the native Indians even in the modern times in which the story is set.