House by the River

Intense period thriller about a writer, Stephen Byrne (played by Louis Hayward), who lives in - yeah, you guessed it - a house by the river; with lovely yard and gazebo, yet oddly dark as the film opens with the sky clouded, shadows cast across scenery, haunting music, a dead animal floating by on the glistening water, and a black widow spider crawling over his writing. We meet the attractive, blonde servant girl, Emily, who Stephen clearly has a lustful eye on from the get-go. By the next scene, he tries to kiss her coming down the stairs after bathing in his tub, and, well, she screams and he "accidentally" strangles her. With his brother assisting him, they put her body in a big sack and sink her in the river, then follows the cover-up of the murder.

Well, this film is quite interesting, dark and suspenseful - there's a lot going on here. The print I saw looked strikingly full of sharp black and white contrast. The photography in this makes the film menacing with blackened rooms lit only by candle light casting dark, sharp shadows across the walls, some extreme camera angles up stairs and down halls, shots of faces seen only in mirrors, extreme close-ups, and sweat dripping on the face of a nervous murderer.

House By The River was a simple tale masterfully brought to the screen by Fritz Lang in his best conventional yet classy style. It was shot on a shoestring budget for Republic but a brooding atmosphere was captured beautifully by intelligent production and marvellous period sets on sharp nitrate film stock. Even the studio shot scenes of the garden with long shots of the bricky houses are fascinating to sink into.

Louis Haywood plays a budding writer with pretensions to Art and dubious morals who accidentally murders his lowly servant girl and drags his weaker brother into the mess to help him out. The story is simply played out to the bitter end, and although I wish the police angle could have been given more prominence it's completely logical. The part the River plays isn't as large as the House, but it's a darkly inspired mix; I've always wondered what colour the wallpaper was. Haywood often played ambivalent characters, however there's no ambivalence here in his portrayal of Stephen Byrne – he's an evil swine all right. When it's all done you should be left with admiration for a director who could make a little go such a long way, with the help of a great team and cast of course!

It deserves more attention than it gets – maybe the simple descriptive title didn't help it win immortality, otoh a more eye-catching "Strangled In The Dark" wouldn't have been as good either! This is one of those little films to treasure and something to revel in at the cinema or late at night on TV with the lights off for maximum effect.

The unsuccessful writer Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) tries to force his servant Emily Gaunt (Dorothy Patrick) sexually while his wife Marjorie Byrne (Jane Wyatt) is visiting a friend and accidentally strangles her. His crippled brother John Byrne (Lee Bowman) coincidently comes to his house in that moment, and Stephen asks him to help to get rid of the corpse and avoid an scandal, since his wife would be pregnant. The naive and good John helps his brother to dump the body in the river nearby his house. Stephen uses the disappearance of Emily to blame her and promote his book. When the body is found by the police, all the evidences points to John, and he becomes the prime suspect of the murder.

"House by the River" is a dark and tense movie with one of the most despicable characters I have ever seen. Louis Hayward is perfect in the role of a scum, capable of killing, defaming, lying, falsely accusing, and maintaining cold blood. Jane Wyatt and Lee Bowman complete the efficient trio of lead cast. Fritz Lang uses with mastery the shadows and lights in the black and white cinematography as usual. The story is very tense, but the conclusion is very abrupt and quite conventional, moralist and commercial. In my opinion, this excellent film deserved a darker and amoral ending to become another masterpiece of this outstanding director. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Maldição" ("Curse")

The most interesting aspect of House By The River is the fact that it was produced at Republic Pictures, the home of Roy Rogers and several other B movie cowboys and the values those pictures put forth. Hardly the place for a moody and atmospheric thriller that examines a man's moral degeneracy directed by Fritz Lang who always likes to explore the dark. One thing that does mark this as a Republic film is the usual Herbert J. Yates economy.

But for a director like Lang who was used to exploring shadowy worlds, economy on the set isn't a hindrance, though back in Germany this man directed the opulent Metropolis. House By The River delivers the most for its meager budget.

Louis Hayward who was a poor man's Tyrone Power and like Power could play straight heroes and hero/heels gets his Nightmare Alley type role as the rich and idle writer who just can't move the writer's block. He takes a real fancy to maid Dorothy Patrick and when she repulses his advances, Hayward kills her. He gets older and club footed brother Lee Bowman to dump the body in the river. But as dead bodies will do, they bloat and have a nasty habit of floating to the top.

Lang and Hayward create a really frightening picture of moral degeneracy that would have resonated well with post World War II audiences who had just defeated a nation gripped in the philosophy that it was a race of super people. Jane Wyatt gets her innings in playing Hayward's wife who Bowman also loved and who starts thinking that maybe she married the wrong brother.

I have to single out Jody Gilbert from the cast who plays Bowman's housekeeper and who Bowman takes his frustrations out on after he's helped Hayward. She's not the sharpest knife in the drawer and misreads all of Bowman's signals and later does him damage at a coroner's inquest.

I'm not sure how much money House By The River brought in to Republic Pictures, but it is a minor masterpiece for this studio.

House by the River (1950)

A straight up Gothic murder scenario with echoes of the 1945 "Spiral Staircase." A family with two brothers at odds with each other is living in a house and one of them is a murderer. And at first only the audience knows who. Their relative isolation on the banks of a wide river means only that they will have little help when danger occurs. The neighbors and police and few and far.

Louis Hayward plays the main character, Stephen Byrne, a writer and a bit of a self-important cad. Hayward has an odd style on film during this era, attractive and likable at first, but with an acerbic humor and some kind of unworkable stiffness, as if you know he's always performing. But he's clever about it, and when you realize he isn't meant to be exactly lovable, he's pretty well cast. Byrne's brother, wife, and maid all come through with solid if uninspired performances, and you wonder exactly what held everyone back. Fritz Lang has many more successful melodramas than this one.

I think the weakness is largely the raw material, the story itself, which is a bit straight forward. One brother commits a murder, the other is drawn into helping cover it up, and then the tensions build between them as an inquest raises questions. It has moments, but there are no further twists that work. The ending is out of character, almost comical in its false (and unlikely) horror.

Along the way, though, are a series of nice scenes, inside the house at night, along the river at night, at a party meant to hide the killer's guilt, and so on. The music is especially helpful in jabbing the audience at key moments. American Georges Antheil was a composer famous for his avant-garde pieces in the 1920s in Europe before settling into a Hollywood routine. You can detect, and appreciate, the edge he brings to the score. The photography by contrast is good without rising up to the possibilities of these kinds of settings--the house, the river, the dock, all have more dramatic potential that we just don't see.