Today's theme is a house, a very big house, in the country featuring films by David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Wise, James Whale, Jack Clayton, and George Cukor.
The Old Dark House (1932)
Director James Whale reunited with Boris Karloff for this camp Gothic horror. Set in the Welsh countryside during a vicious storm, a group of travellers (Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart, Raymond Massey, Lilian Bond, and Charles Laughton) take shelter in an decaying old mansion, home to strange and eccentric Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), his sister Rebecca (Eva Moore), and their monstrous servant Morgan (Karloff). Has a delightfully grim atmosphere, but is seriously slow going, the romance elements don't convince, and the ending is a bit anti-climatic. Karloff gets little to do except lumber around drunk and mumble something that I think is supposed to be Welsh. As he did in Bride of Frankenstein, Thesiger easily steals the whole show as Horace.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Wealthy socialite Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn) is set to marry George Kittredge (John Howard) at her family's stately home in Philadelphia, but her first husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), decides to crash the wedding and brings along magazine reporter Mike Connor (James Stewart) and photographer Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey). I'd watched His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby before this and preferred it over both of them because the entire cast wasn't talking at a mile a minute and the zingers actually had time to land before another one came along. This is just a sublime comedy with an exceptional cast, and I don't just mean the three big stars; everyone is great in this especially Virginia Weidler as Tracy's snarky teenage sister Dinah. The only issue I had was that Tracy was far too forgiving of her father's infidelity (and how he blamed her for it) and the resolution to all the romantic entanglements felt way too neat.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Great Expectations (1946)
The second most adapted work by Charles Dickens. A blacksmith's apprentice unexpectedly comes into a fortune and sets off to London to become a gentleman, all the while wondering if his mysterious benefactor is the creepy old lady who lives in the creepy old mansion he hung out in as a kid. It does an effective job of condensing the book into a two-hour film, but still suffers from the first part of the story being more interesting than the second. There were moments that made me wish David Lean had made a horror film at some point in his illustrious career, and there were other moments that made me wonder if he thought he was making a parody of the story. John Mills, pushing 40 at the time, just doesn't convince as a young man of twenty while Valerie Hobson is easily overshadowed by Jean Simmons as the younger Estella.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
The Innocents (1961)
The inexperienced and sheltered Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) is hired by a wealthy and disinterested bachelor (Michael Redgrave) to take care of his niece and nephew (Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin) at his large country estate. Soon after arriving she begins to suspect that the children are possessed by the ghosts of the former governess and her lover. William Archibald was originally going to adapt his own 1950 play based on The Turn of the Screw, which made the supernatural elements more explicit, but Jack Clayton wanted to maintain the ambiguity of the original story so brought in Truman Capote and John Mortimer to rework the script and give it a polish. Clayton understood that the best ghost stories maintain their power by always keeping you guessing, never ever letting you know exactly what is happening. A triumph of cinematography, editing, and sound design, but its best asset is Kerr herself, who keep her performance just unhinged enough that you do wonder if all that Victorian repression is slowly sending her off the deep end.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rebecca (1940)
Alfred Hitchcock, working in Hollywood for the first time under the thumb of David O. Selznick, adapts Daphne du Maurier's famous novel. Joan Fontaine stars as the unnamed young woman who impulsively marries wealthy widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). Upon returning with him to Manderley, his grand family home, the new Mrs. de Winter quickly finds herself at odds with the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), who was fanatically devoted to Rebecca, the first Mrs. de Winter. There probably isn't a more famous mansion in classical fiction than Manderley and Hitchcock makes great use of its oppressive vastness. Even if Mrs. Danvers wasn't there, the house is doing all it can to make the heroine feel small and insecure. Danvers' obsession with the previous Mrs. de Winter and the psychological torment she inflicts on the current one is the most interesting thing about this story, but it takes too long to get going and there isn't enough of it when it finally does. Honestly feels like the whole thing reaches its dramatic crescendo with the big reveal and then just shuffles along for a bit longer so everything can be wrapped up neatly.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
The Haunting (1963)
Hoping to prove the existence of the supernatural, Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) rents out the allegedly haunted Hill House for the weekend to conduct experiments. Staying with him are the troubled Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris), cocky Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn), the heir to the house, and Theo (Claire Bloom), a mean lesbian with psychic gifts and a truly antagonistic flirting style. Unlike the lousy 1999 version, which was all about special effects, jump scares, and literal conflicts of good and evil, Robert Wise's adaptation of the Shirley Jackson novel is a slow burn and low-key chiller that values good old fashioned unease and ambiguity. It's a film far more interested in the psychological effect staying in this creepy house has on the characters than whether or not there are actually any ghosts. An effective haunted house tale, but not quite as technically impressive as The Innocents.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011 More Mark Greig
I have never seen The Old Dark House, but I have seen the others and they are great movies. I do have issues with both Philadelphia Story and Rebecca. You have touched on some of my problems with Philadelphia Story. In addition what you brought up I am troubled by the entire attitude toward Traci. She doesn't want to be married to a man who drinks. The one time she drinks she goes so far overboard that she doesn't remember what she did. Seems to me that she has some pretty good reasons to want to avoid her ex husband AND to be with someone who won't look down on her for not letting loose and drinking.
ReplyDeleteRebecca is an interesting one, at least with today's culture. In the end it is the story of a man who murders his wife and then explains it by saying she asked for it. Yes, we are told by others that Rebecca behaved in a way that wasn't appropriate for a respectable woman in those days. Yes, we are told she was cruel. Yes, the obsession of Mrs. Danvers verges on sapphic, but still, Max murders his wife because she convinces him she cheated on him and she knew him well enough that she KNEW he would react violently and was capable of murder so she baited him into killing her because she didn't want to die the slow death of cancer. Then Max marries a much younger girl who wouldn't say boo to a goose and has zero ability to stand up to him at all. Let's just say, Rebecca, for all the great acting makes me uncomfortable.
I own 2 of these and mentioned 'The Haunting' on my top list for 2024. I need to review it and 'The Old Dark House' one of these days. Thesinger is indeed brilliant in that film and of course 'Bride of Frankenstein' which I did get reviewed last year. He's so good, I wish I had him in more of my old movies. I enjoy both films, but I find Bride is better. I have not seen the newer version of The Haunting, but from your description, I don't think I want to.
ReplyDeleteI need to see The Innocents as I've seen it recommended elsewhere before your mini review here, and I do need to see Rebecca one of these days.
On a side note, I bought the 'To The Manor Born' collection on DVD for my mom a few years back. She watched it all the time when it was on PBS in Milwaukee back in the lates 70s/early 80s.
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