the audience applauded

From my favorite movies..

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Blistering performances.

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

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.

I expect Russell was the Technicolor draw for this rather tame installment of passion in the desert. Her box-office was peaking as thousands of men fantasized over certain Amazonian endowments. Still, she's quite good as the conflicted-wife, breathing life into a sometimes slumping narrative. Will she and Chandler stay together once they decide to get hitched. That's basically the plot-line, so get interested if you can. Trouble is he's also married to his job at the gold mine; plus, being the swarthy Chandler from a hundred previous Westerns, he's also half- Apache. But more difficult for them, she's a rich girl from the East with a snooty mother, so you get the culture clash idea.Duryea as the dipso doctor looks like he's having fun. But you do have to believe that somehow he handles the booze bottle with one hand and his patients with the other. Seems like a real stretch to me. Then too, there's the shapely Corday in a tacked-on role. Somehow she manages a fashion wardrobe on a nurse's salary. Oh well, she does have to carve out a glamour spot from the formidable Russell. Not much really happens in the 90-minutes. But there is a lot of eye candy, especially the bright colors that show up like neons against the desert backdrop. Otherwise, except for the attractive stars, this desert soap opera is pretty much forgettable.

Universal-International was a busy little hive of audience-pleasing eye candy back in the Fifties and it probably employed more "starlets" and up-and-coming hunks in its stable of contractees than all of its major studio rivals combined. Some of U.-I.'s output contained some very worthwhile elements amidst the Technicolored trappings. This one offered some fairly well-considered insights on the marital tribulations encountered when two people from very dissimilar backgrounds and outlooks on life attempt to make of their marriage vows more than just a ritual they once pronounced when their union began.Jane Russell seemed well paired with the tall and handsome Jeff Chandler and the locations look authentic enough for the story to hold one's interest. Celia Lovsky, always an actress who could win an audience's favor in the briefest of roles (and, alas, she was never allotted more than a few scenes in most of her films), scores once again in "Foxfire." This is one to watch for if you notice it scheduled on a late-night or early afternoon TV broadcast.