The Swan (1956)

(On Cable TV, August 2021) At this point, I’m nearly convinced that tales of European royalty romance are only fit to bore me mildly. I simply don’t have the interest in whatever they’re playing off. It’s even worse in The Swan, which sets up a familiar tale of romance between a princess and a commoner… only to deliberately avoid the expected happy ending. Rather than make a point, it merely seems to be flaying about in confusion, just ending on a note of disappointment. Of course, The Swan is still being watched today for factors not entirely of the film’s own making. Here, Grace Kelly plays a princess in her next-to-last Hollywood movie before becoming… a princess. (The film was released on the day of her royal wedding, no less.)  Still, that doesn’t make Kelly’s performance any more animated — it’s easy to start rooting for Alec Guinness when he acts like an overgrown boy in a royal role, even as the film tries to have us sympathize with Louis Jourdan at the other extremity of the love triangle. I watched The Swan but I can’t say I have any definite feelings one way or the other. My expectations aren’t necessarily subverted by the anticlimactic ending — I just feel as if it’s missing something. Kelly looks like a princess but acts like a block of ice, whereas Guinness is an unexpected highlight. It’s clearly the film director Charles Vidor wanted to make, but I just keep on questioning whether it was a good idea at all.