Blanche Fury (1948)

Ambitious poor relation Blanche Fullerton accepts a job as governess from her wealthy cousins who have adopted the name Fury since they acquired the ancestral home of the Fury family. Blanche plots to become the lady of the manor but her illicit passion for the vengeful, obsessed Philip Thorn sets off a string of tragic events, including murder

Director: Marc Allegret
Cast: Valerie Hobson, Stewart Granger, Michael Gough, Walter Fitzgerald, Susanne Gibbs, Maurice Denham, Sybille Binder, Ernest Jay, Townsend Whitling, J.H. Roberts, Allan Jeayes, Edward Lexy, Arthur Wontner, Amy Veness, Cherry London, George Woodbridge, Lionel Grose, Bryan Herbert, Margaret Withers, Norman Pierce, Wilfrid Caithness, James Dale, Cecil Ramage, David Ward, Sidney Benson, M.E. Clifton-James, Michael Brennan, Charles Saynor, Alexander Field, Marie Ault




IMDb

Blanche Fury combined two elements that were surefire moneymakers in postwar Britain: a brooding, Gothic-novel storyline and the dazzlingly handsome Stewart Granger. Heroine Blanche Fury (Valerie Hobson) is an impoverished governess who marries into wealth and sets herself up as the mistress of a vast estate. Enter Heathcliffe-like stable boy Philip Thorn (Granger), who intends to run the estate and eventually claim Blanche as his own. After a torrid, bodice-ripping romance between Blanche and Philip, the story segues into a no-names-please reenactment of the infamous 19th-century "Rush Murder." To "explain" the motives of the characters, the screenwriters deviate from the original Joseph Shearing novel by imposing all sorts of 20th-century "psychological disturbances" upon hero and heroine, with an abruptness and lack of logic that takes the viewer's breath away. Up until the end, however, Blanche Fury is a prime example of high-budget postwar British melodrama. Oddly, despite its $1.5 million price tag, con brio performances and superb Technicolor cinematography, Blanche Fury was a box-office disappointment, bringing an end to the "Gothic cycle" that had begun so promisingly with 1943's The Man in Grey.
~ Hal Erickson, Rovi