Dragonwyck (1946)

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring Vincent Price, Gene Tierney, Glenn Langan, Walter Huston, Anne Revere, Spring Byington, Connie Marshall, Vivienne Osborne, Harry Morgan, Jessica Tandy, Trudy Marshall.

Lush Gothic melodrama may be little more than a patch on Rebecca, but it sure wants to be in her league; “Orson Welles’ Jane Eyre”it’s not, either. The emulation never takes hold despite abundant pseudo-mysterious atmosphere and a charismatically suspicious performance from Vincent Price, stealing co-lead Gene Tierney’s thunder at nearly every turn. She’s a naïve farm girl who travels to the title estate of Price, a haughty distant cousin, to become his daughter’s governess. Class-conscious storytelling and bold-typed roles for Walter Huston and Anne Revere as Tierney’s parents strip away some of the moody romanticism of its ornate trappings. The plot simultaneously (and dissonantly) becomes less interesting and more engrossing in the final third as everything finally calcifies with directness and clarity, and Price finally shows signs of the theatrical antagonism that would turn him into a horror icon later in his career. The dreamlike passages of Arthur C. Miller’s lensing smooths over the rough uncertainty of the screenplay. Joe Mankiewicz wrote, and this movie also served as his directorial debut. Original director Ernst Lubitsch stayed on as a producer.

64/100