Fanny

Love is a complicated emotion. It moves the world and can stop it dead in its tracks. It can make life beautiful and can also make it tragic. It could, to steal a line from Charles Dickens, be the best of times and the worst of times. It really is dependent on a lot of factors on how it affects you. It’s better to have loved and lost than to never love at all. Those who have loved and lost might disagree with that homily, but for the most part, that is a true statement. It’s also true that loving someone who doesn’t return that emotion, at least not as strongly as you do, can lead to a lot of heartache. Any adolescent person going through their first crush can attest to that. 

When 1961’s Best Picture nominee Fanny opens, we get a pretty good idea of where she is on that spectrum. The setting is 1920s Marseille, France, and 18-year-old Fanny (Leslie Caron) is in love with Marius (Horst Buchholz), a young man she has grown up around. Fanny works with her widowed mother at the fish market, while Marius works with his father in his bar, dreaming all the while of escaping the city and sailing around the world on a shipping vessel. Fanny makes sure that Marius knows her feelings for him, but he is quick to rebuff her advances. One evening, though, shortly after he signs on to go out to sea for several years, he relents, and the two spend the night together. When they are discovered, both their parents set out to plan their future. But Fanny, knowing his heart is already on that boat, lets him go. 

Meanwhile, Panisse (Maurice Chevalier), a middle-aged, wealthy shop owner, has set his eyes on her. He has recently been widowed and is looking for a new wife. This match delights Fanny’s mother, who sees the wealth this will bring her daughter. On top of that, Panisse is genuinely a good man who is madly in love with her. When Fanny discovers that she is pregnant from her one night with Marius, she tells Panisse, assuming that he will no longer want her. Instead, he is understanding and delighted, willing to accept the unborn child as his own, as he and his late wife never had children. Fanny accepts his marriage proposal and never writes to Marius to tell him of the child. When Marius returns from the sea, on leave for a short time, he finds out about the baby and ascertains the baby’s true parentage and is, at first, determined to lay claim to the child. But he sees that Fanny is content with her new life and that it is not his place to disrupt that. 

Love can make you do all sorts of things, even make sacrifices that will keep you from the one you love. We’ve all heard the saying: If you love them, let them go, and if they return to you, they are yours forever. When Fanny hears Marius’ father and her mother plotting out their lives, she sees on Marius’ face that he doesn’t want to stay in Marseille. She is not aware at that moment that he has already signed up to go out to sea for five years. All she knows is that he doesn’t want to be trapped in Marseille. She loves him enough to give him the go-ahead to set sail, leaving her behind, knowing that if she insisted, he would stay here but would be miserable, perhaps even come to resent her for it. 

For his part, we never get a real sense that Marius has any real feelings for her. He has a jealous streak in him that almost propels him to blows with Panisse when the older man is flirting with her, but that is not necessarily love. Even his father, César (Charles Boyer), sees this. When it is revealed to him that Marius is the father of Fanny’s child, he initially demands that Marius be told. But it doesn’t take a lot of reasoning to convince him that Marius is unlikely to return for the child in time to avoid the baby being born as illegitimate. He also sees that the child will be born to two loving parents, even if one of them isn’t the biological parent. 

Maurice Chevalier is an interesting choice to play the part of the good-natured, but older, man pursuing a much younger woman. Chevalier made a career out of playing womanizers and lotharios. In both The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You, he was joyfully chasing skirts and being lecherous. When we are introduced to him here, he is making passes at Fanny, doing things that are outright uncomfortable to watch. We are completely on Marius’ side when he threatens to attack him. Yet by the time we get to the end of the film, our feelings for Panisse have completely changed. We first get a glimpse of his real character when Fanny tells him she is pregnant. He takes her outside his business and shows her the big letters on the side with his name on them, points out how it is not centered, then takes her back inside where he reveals the remaining letters. These letters, covered in a thick layer of dust, spell out “& SON.” His excitement over the news and refusal to judge her for being unwed and pregnant tells us a lot about his character. 

Leslie Caron is one of those actresses that began her career as a ballerina. Because of that, and her stunningly good looks, she was cast opposite Gene Kelly in An American in Paris. This led to other roles including immensely popular films such as: Gigi, The Glass Slipper, Father Goose, and of course Fanny. Her career has spanned more than six decades with her last on-screen credit in 2020. She was very charming and charismatic in her youth and that shows on screen, even though she can’t quite hide that she is thirty playing eighteen. She was nominated by the Academy twice for her acting -for Lili and The L-Shaped Room- but to date has never won.

This film was based on a series of novels that at one point were adapted into a stage musical. The musical was adapted into this film almost word-for-word but oddly chose to leave out all the songs. There are times, throughout, where it feels like it is building up to a song only to cut away, leaving the moment a bit empty. The score, utilizing these songs at times, doesn’t help this feeling that something is missing. Mercifully, these moments are not too frequent and are confined to the first half-hour of the picture. 

Fanny, on the surface, is a simple story about love and its many facets. But it is a deeper film than just that. Marius decides not to try and take his son away from her because of this. Panisse, who loves his non-biological son, accepts that she may love Marius but he loves their child. He says that she can go with Marius but he wants to keep the child. Marius calls this a cheat, rightfully pointing out that Fanny would never leave Panisse without her son. And that is true. Whether she loves Panisse or not, she does love her baby and that trumps any love she may have for Marius. Marius knows this and bows out of the picture. 

As I mentioned above, love can make us do things we might not do otherwise. It makes the world go around and it motivates us in ways we may not see and understand. Fanny takes place over the course of many years, and the woman at the end of the picture is not the same one at the beginning. She has had time to reconcile herself to the realities of the situation she is in and go on with her life. The ending, therefore, feels a little too perfectly wrapped up and manufactured. It’s not off-putting, but it feels a bit unnecessary. Still, some people will see this as a happy ending and find it satisfying. I didn’t, but that is just a personal opinion. That happy ending is a long time coming, though, and does bring the drama to a close neatly; just a little bit too neatly for me. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Joshua Logan

Best Actor: Charles Boyer

Best Cinematography - Color: Jack Cardiff

Best Film Editing: William Reynolds

Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture: Morris Stoloff and Harry Sukman

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Release Date: June 28, 1961

Running Time: 134 Minutes

Not Rated

Starring: Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, and Horst Buchholz

Directed By: Joshua Logan