The Constant Nymph

Tessa, the daughter of a music teacher, is devoted to a young composer who comes and goes from their house. He is fond of her too, but mostly as a child. When her father dies an uncle arrives to take charge of the children, bringing his grown daughter with him. The composer marries that woman, and a quiet tension settles among the three of them. Directed by Edmund Goulding, the film was adapted from Margaret Kennedy's novel. Joan Fontaine plays Tessa and Charles Boyer the composer. Music is at the centre of it. The telling neither mocks an adolescent girl's feeling nor romanticises it; the view is kept at a distance. Even so, this relationship between a grown man and a child is uncomfortable from here, and the film was made with the outlook of its own period.