Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Overrated and overhyped

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

'The Constant Nymph' tells the story of a delightful young girl (Joan Fontaine) who has a crush on an older man (Charles Boyer), a friend of her father's. Fontaine is fantastic, grabbing us from the start with infectious energy, and truly channeling what it is to be a teenager, despite being 26 years old at the time. Boyer turns in a strong performance as well, playing a headstrong composer of modern symphonies, which are short on melody and jarring. He marries a rich woman (Alexis Smith), and the two soon butt heads over social functions, as well as her jealousy over the special relationship he has with the young girl.Despite this relationship and all of the dreamy glances Fontaine casts in Boyer's direction, those who liken the film to Lolita are off-base. There is such purity and chasteness here, with Fontaine's character having a sense of honor against doing wrong, and Boyer's having no lascivious interest in her or her sisters at all. They are the polar opposites of Dolores Haze and Humbert Humbert, who between flirtation, predation, statutory rape, and ultimately, humiliation, have us cringing (though perhaps unable to look away). The title word here, 'nymph', should be considered simply as a young maiden, without the sexual connotations it's sometimes associated with. I really liked this innocence, it makes the story tug on the heartstrings all the more, and I also liked the civility and grace by which even the strongest and most personal feelings are expressed. The plot borders on melodrama but it's the strength of the performances that carry it for me. Fontaine was well worthy of her Oscar nomination, Boyer ranges from troubled artist to affectionate 'uncle', and Alexis Smith simmers visibly as she tries to control her feelings. It wanders dangerously close to cloying, but ultimately is just the right amount of sweet, and rather touching.

There are some major keys to the essence of this tragedy of music and love. One of them is the old composer Albert Sanger, played by Montagu Love, who is the knowledgeable one about music and who clearly sees the foibles of Lewis Dodd (Charles Boyer), the famous wannabe composer, all modernist, but with some hope in him. The old man sees this hope and encourages it, and he dies with something of a testament to Charles Boyer of an idea to "true" music.Another who sees the heart of the matter in music is his daughter Tessa, played by Joan Fontaine, who got an Oscar nomination for her heartrending performance. While she sees through everything she suffers from a sensitive heart and easily gets "palpitations". Her sensitivity is grossly overlooked, underestimated and ignored by her surrounding people, especially by her cousin (Alexis Smith) who marries Charles Boyer who really loves him but never understands him, – even less understanding her "so much younger" cousin, who loves Charles Boyer so much deeper and more understandingly.The tragedy is unsuspected at first, it comes stealing in gradually to in the end affect everyone with overwhelming heartbreakingness, while no one really is guilty. No one could foresee it, not even Alexis Smith, who makes a performance second only to Joan Fontaine.Music and love triumphs in the end but at a terrible cost, while at the same time the truth of love and music stand victorious transcending the pettiness of human relationships, ambitions, careers and all that. Charles Boyer is always perfect in his own way, so natural and dynamic in whatever part he plays, Joan Fontaine and Alexis Smith are both at their best, Charles Coburn reliable as always, and even Peter Lorre has a somewhat pathetically important part in the tragedy, which is of women, love and music. This is an extremely female matter, but Edmund Goulding handles it with great understanding and care, his films are always deeply and thoroughly human, he also made "Dark Victory" with Bette Davis, "The Razor's Edge" and "Nightmare Alley" with Tyrone Power for some examples, and here he reached perhaps his closest touch to the essence of the human heart.

Although I was only 13 years old the first time I saw this film, it moved me. That may be because I could relate to the Joan Fontaine character. Sometimes we fall in love with a movie for reasons we cannot recall. In any case, I have been searching for a copy (VHS or DVD)for years and find that it is no longer available. I am disappointed to learn that. My sister and I saw this movie together; we cried, it was so lovely. We have discussed it over the years and have both tried to remember certain scenes and some dialogue, but the background music was the most memorable. In fact, we both forgot that it was Charles Boyer who was in the film; we were mistaken in thinking it was Brian Aherne, and that may be one of the reasons we could not find it!

Joan Fontaine has became one of my very favorite actresses, just like her sister Olivia de Havilland, after seeing her in such Classics as "Rebecca", "Suspicion", "Jane Eyre" and that masterpiece, "Letter from an Unknown Woman". That mesmerizing constantly-frightened-insecure-frail look of hers has totally bewitched me; her classic features surrounded by an ethereal aura; her distinction and class, even in waif-like roles like the one she plays here and in "Letter…".This film, just as "Letter from an Unknown Woman" is about Love, sometimes unrequited but always "intense". Young Tessa Sanger (Joan Fontaine) is deeply in love with much elder composer Lewis Dodd (Charles Boyer), who hasn't been able to succeed as musician. Tessa's father (another musician) played by Montagu Love, says that Lewis will have to love and suffer because of it, to attain an achievement as a composer.The wondrous music by masterful German composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold is a marvel, pure poetry, which sets the perfect mood for this melancholic Love Story; it was really a privilege for Warner Brothers Pictures to have had the fortune of counting him as one of the members of its staff; Korngold's music is an awesome contribution to the Motion Pictures.As I said before Joan Fontaine's perfect as the young Tessa. She was something like 26 years old when this movie was filmed and she portrays convincingly and believably the love-stricken teenager. Boyer is good as the intense composer and plays sensitively his scenes with Fontaine. Kudos too for Alexis Smith, who plays Florence, Tessa's elder cousin with great skill and sentiment.Others in the magnificent cast are Charles Coburn as Tessa's lovable uncle, Brenda Marshall as Tessa's sister, Dame May Witty as a Dowager British Aristocrat, Peter Lorre as a friend of the Sanger family, Eduardo Ciannelli as Roberto, a faithful servant of the Sanger family, Jean Muir, etc.Again, it's a shame that this wonderful, utterly moving film is out of circulation due to legal issues, if they didn't exist it should belong to TCM's Library (just like "Letty Lynton").