TopBilled
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THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL (1951)
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ALL MY SONS (1948)
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Eleanor Parker
Next: A.A.
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Corey, Wendell
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Bob Denver
Next: three initials
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REPEAT PERFORMANCE (1947)
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SKIPPING X
Young, Loretta
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THE WAGONS ROLL AT NIGHT (1941)
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Today's neglected film is from 1951. It has aired once on TCM.
Women in peril stories usually make for suspenseful motion pictures. Of course some of them are more expertly made than others. The trend seems to have become fashionable after the success of REBECCA (1940). Joan Fontaine and Alfred Hitchcock revisited this theme a year later when they made SUSPICION (1941) for RKO. In 1944, it was MGM’s turn, adapting the British hit GASLIGHT (1944).
Warner Brothers jumped in with THE TWO MRS. CARROLLS in 1947– that time Barbara Stanwyck was the imperiled female. She repeated these duties at Paramount when she made SORRY WRONG NUMBER (1948).
20th Century Fox got in on the act with this film, made in 1951. THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL seems to borrow from all those earlier hits, but I think it probably comes closest to emulating what is seen in GASLIGHT. Mostly because it relies on the idea that the endangered lady is played by a foreign actress, here Valentina Cortese who gives her best interpretation of what Ingrid Bergman accomplished.
In the story there’s a fine line between sanity and paranoia, bordering on hysteria. Perhaps it is because we already know that with English being her second language, and by her having only recently come to the U.S., she is vulnerable. Such vulnerability translates well on screen and combines with more fragile qualities.
Since this picture is directed by Robert Wise, it has an advantage that George Cukor’s film does not have. Wise trained under Orson Welles at RKO, so the elaborate sets and rich details seem directly inspired by THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942), where the family’s dwelling is forbidding…limiting and restrictive…as it is explicitly mentioned in the title, it is a character in its own right.
The gothic mansion helps the dastardly villain (Richard Basehart) with all his sinister secrets conceal and entomb the wife, making it harder for her to get out or to get free.
Miss Cortese and Mr. Basehart fell in love off-screen and married shortly after completing the picture. That makes the scenes where she is enthralled by him on camera more convincing, believable to us that because she’s smitten she is unable to see him for the cad he really is until it’s almost too late.
Studio contract player William Lundigan is third-billed as a friend of the couple. His part is essentially the same as Joe Cotten’s part in GASLIGHT. He is there as a sounding board and extra love interest to the damsel in distress. He will help her break free and escape this hellish horror.
Since Wise’s version is made after the war, it includes some strong background details. The first five to ten minutes involves Cortese’s character surviving a Nazi concentration camp in Poland and stealing the identity of a wealthy Polish-American woman (Natasha Lytess). They’ve been stuck in the same camp, and when Lytess dies and her papers fall into Cortese’s hands, Cortese assumes the dead woman’s identity. Liberators then send her to America.
The irony is that she’s trading one hell for another. Frisco-based Basehart has custody of the woman’s young son and controls her assets. So naturally, it is in his best interests to control her and if she proves a problem, to eliminate her.
The third act of the film involves his plan with another woman (Fay Baker) to kill Cortese and probably kill the boy, too. The story has a dimension GASLIGHT lacks, since a child is also in danger, and it ups the stakes.
The film was nominated for best art direction, and Wise provides wonderful atmospheric touches. There are several profoundly gripping shots where Wise and cinematographer Lucien Ballard capture the shadows and movement within those shadows. The heroine and her viewers remain totally entranced and entirely off balance, until the very end.
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Tuesday October 4, 2022
Terror on TCM
the haunting
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Tuesday October 4, 2022
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two thousand five hundred seventy-seventh categoryEerie use of landscape
THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933)
NIGHTFALL (1957)
A SIMPLE PLAN (1998)-
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THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955)
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Lee
Next: MacMurray, Dryer and Flintstone
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Ed Lauter
Next: B.B.
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THERE'S ALWAYS A WOMAN (1938)
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MISSISSIPPI (1935)
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Robert Alda
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USED PEOPLE (1992)
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THE TOPEKA TERROR (1945)
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Valentino, Rudolph
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FLIGHT NURSE (1953)
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LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE (1951)
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THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S (1968)
3 people in the same film
in Games and Trivia
Posted
THE BLUE BIRD (1976)
Next: Richard Basehart, Valentina Cortese & William Lundigan