The Swan (1956)

Film: The Swan (1956)

Stars: Grace Kelly, Alec Guinness, Louis Jourdan, Agnes Moorehead, Jessie Royce Landis

Director: Charles Vidor

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Grace Kelly-click here to learn more about Ms. Kelly (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In April of 1955, Grace Kelly headed to Cannes as part of the US delegation for that year's festivities.  While she was there, there was an arranged meeting with Prince Rainier of nearby Monaco, which led to a courtship, which led to one of the most spectacular moments in movie history when Grace Kelly, movie star extraordinaire, became a literal Hollywood princess.  As we'll discuss below, this is where Grace Kelly's acting career ended-just weeks after winning an Oscar, the highest honor for an actress, she was basically on her way out of the industry, as Kelly would never work again as an actress in films after going royal.  She had two movies in the can before she left Hollywood which came out after she was a princess.  One was High Society, which I've seen (and which pales in comparison to the original Philadelphia Story).  The other was one I hadn't, and so I saw The Swan for this project, and as luck would have it (for both me and for MGM's publicity department) the film stars Kelly...playing a princess.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Princess Alexandra (Kelly) who is a relatively low-ranking royal living her years out with her mother Princess Beatrix (Landis), after the announcement that Crown Prince Albert (Guinness) will be visiting.  Beatrix is insistent that this is the opportunity they've been waiting for to get back their stature, marrying the Crown Prince & making Alexandra a queen.  The only problem is that Alexandra is a bit of a bore, and Albert is far more interested in music & other nerdy endeavors to give Alexandra much heed.  Beatrix comes up with a plan to have her sons' handsome tutor Nicholas (Jourdan) try to woo Alexandra in hopes of making Albert jealous, but the plan backfires spectacular when it turns out that Nicholas is already in love with Alexandra...and quickly she is in love with him.  When the Queen (Moorehead) comes to town, everything comes to a head as the love triangle must find one side to stand on.

According to what I've read, the producers of The Swan (based on a play by Molnar) considered changing the traditional ending of the film, which ends with Alexandra & Nicholas apart because she cannot marry a commoner.  However, after Princess Margaret declined to marry Peter Townsend, they decided the ending should stand, and so the movie ends with Alexandra likely to marry either no one or (more probably) Albert, knowing that neither will be particularly happy together but they've fulfilled their duty to their country.  It might be this reason why I like it.  The Swan is not a particularly good movie (even if the sets are really fun & the supporting cast is decent), but I enjoyed it.  It's the kind of turn-off-your-brain romantic drama that you can sometimes get sucked into on a rainy afternoon, and that was the mood I was in for the picture.

Kelly is a dud in the movie, pretty blasé (though it is fun to see her acting with a leading man who is actually her age after she wooed men 10+ years older than her the rest of the month) and more ornamental.  Watching Kelly this month (and I've now seen virtually every film she ever made), I'm struck by how Hitchcock is the only director who ever really got her as a performer.  She is so much better-suited for his work, and she fits in some ways with actresses like Lizabeth Scott or January Jones, who were really good at one specific thing, but otherwise fell flat.

Her life would look like a storybook, but wouldn't exactly be one.  Reports of the marriage run from it being a good one with some problems to one that felt isolating for Kelly.  She would give Rainer an heir (and two spares), continuing on the line of the Monaco royal family, but she had to give up acting, despite attempts to get back in roles in Marnie and The Turning Point.  Kelly's life was cut short in 1982 when she suffered a stroke while driving with her daughter Stephanie-Stephanie was fine, but Kelly died due to injuries to her brain and chest at the age of just 52.  Next month we're going to take a look at an actress who was one Kelly's contemporaries, one who like Kelly would work with Alfred Hitchcock early on in her career, but while Kelly's film career was defined by Hitchcock, this actress would make him a rather dismissible chapter in an otherwise other-worldly career.