"The Uninvited" (1944) takes place on the English coast where a brother and sister (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) become enchanted with and move into an old seaside house that has stood uninhabited for years. Their enchantment soon turns to trepidation as they hear eerie sounds, smell aromatic scents, and feel barometric drops in temperature from room to room. They meet the daughter (Gail Russell) of the previous owners, who now lives nearby with her grandfather, who is fascinated with the home she only briefly lived in as a child. And there are stories that the house is haunted. And so the mysteries must be investigated by the trio, questions must be answered, and the plot thickens as the story evolves. They are later assisted by a handsome young doctor (Alan Napier, the TV Batman's butler, Alfred), and now there is no third wheel and everybody has a love interest.
"The Uninvited" was a box office hit and also fared well with critics in the U.S., but the Academy did not reward it so well: it only got one Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography (it lost to "Laura"). The film is also famous for introducing the song, "Stella by Starlight," which became a pop standard. Paramount tried to imitate the success of "The Uninvited" the following year with "The Unseen," also directed by Allen, also starring Russelland also nominated for one technical Academy Award, Sound Recording. Not a ghost story but a conventional murder mystery, it was not a box office, nor critical success despite a screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Hagar Wilde.
The ghostly film, "The Uninvited," shows shades of "Portrait of Jennie," "Rebecca," "Laura," "Leave Her to Heaven," without those films' attempts at deeper, more philosophical, thematic pondering on the nature of truth and loveperhaps partly due to the always popping up comic relief, which is there all the way to the mystery-resolving end. But this is what makes this ghost story different, this lighter approachas when Roderick (Milland) constantly tries to calm his sister Pamela (Hussey) with pleas to her sanity, when he is really trying to soothe himself and not lose his own. One could say this is Hitchcockesque, except for its pervasiveness: Hitch usually uses his comic relief more sparingly; when he doesn't, the difference is that between a humoresque "The Trouble With Harry" and the allegro con suspense "North by Northwest." Interesting that writer Cornelia Otis Skinner plays Miss Holloway in "The Uninvited," as Russell had her first starring role as the author later this same year, 1944, in the movie version of the autobiographical novel "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay," co-written with Emily Kimbrough. Skinner gives us shades of Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock's "Rebecca," from four years earlierdark, absorbed, and perhaps self mesmerized. Such stylized, surrealistic theatrics might seem laughable to some audience members today, but back then they suited the character and the movie that both seek to give us an otherworldly sense of psychology. Today's world has brought psychology into its homes, where yesterday's world saw what was still a relatively new science as something foreign, strange. A movie, and performance, like this adds to the myth rather than the reality.
And too, it even has a Hitchcock feel and look, due to the direction of Lewis Allen and the cinematography of Charles Langwho was nominated for one of eighteen Academy Award nominations. (He won once for the 1934 "A Farewell to Arms" and is tied with Leon Shamroy for most cinematography nominations). This is black and white at its best, utilizing the contrast of light and dark to evoke mystery and dramathe use of shadows, dimly light rooms, candlelight, backlit and beneath-lit actors. Lewis Allen, who later moved from movies almost exclusively to American television, specializing in westerns, "Bonanza," and crime dramas, "Cannon," is not terribly original, probably more derivative and imitative of his English, suspense-film predecessor. So again, the film does not quite rise to superlatives as it lends itself to comparatives.
Another issue of mediocrity would be the lack of uniformity in the accents of Hussey and Russell: The American breaks through the British noticeably, unevenly. Now, there are plenty of examples throughout Golden Era movie-making when producers and directors did not require setting-appropriate accents of their actors. But there are plenty of occasions of great actresses (Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, Vivien Leigh) expertly capturing a culture-specific accent. However, there are just as many occasions of great actresses (Rosalind Russell, Maureen O'Sullivan, Ann Rutherford) totally ignoring a screaming requisite for an alteration in accent to suit the setting. Perhaps this is one issue that contemporary audiences who say they can't stand old movies sometimes find off-putting with classic cinemaalong with their other plaints, such as black and white, that they don't always understand. Failure for an actor to alter accent appropriate to atmosphere would not be tolerated by today's industry nor audience. Understandably soso, I've got to side with my contemporaries here: This acting malfunction is decidedly distracting, and as much as I love Gail Russell and Ruth Hussey for their form and performances elsewhere, I must fault them here. A tolerated liability back in the day, cannot be tolerated in this daythough I still tolerate, even embrace, Skinner's stagy, bizarre expressionistic, eccentric manner, for these acting techniques are intended to stand out as peculiar, to create an eerie aura that insinuates her character's vindictive nature. Skinner intends to be hystericalnot as in risible, but as in psychopathological.
Still, all in all, "The Uninvited" is fun and nice to look atafter all, that's what the Academy nominated it forif you can accept its peculiar shortcomings. It's not very scary, especially in an age of spooky cinema dominated by slashers, psychos and parody of slashers and psychos. But it's a well-told tale, and as the ghost chasers are chased by ghosts, it keeps one guessing for its hundred minute run.
"The Uninvited" was a box office hit and also fared well with critics in the U.S., but the Academy did not reward it so well: it only got one Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography (it lost to "Laura"). The film is also famous for introducing the song, "Stella by Starlight," which became a pop standard. Paramount tried to imitate the success of "The Uninvited" the following year with "The Unseen," also directed by Allen, also starring Russelland also nominated for one technical Academy Award, Sound Recording. Not a ghost story but a conventional murder mystery, it was not a box office, nor critical success despite a screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Hagar Wilde.
The ghostly film, "The Uninvited," shows shades of "Portrait of Jennie," "Rebecca," "Laura," "Leave Her to Heaven," without those films' attempts at deeper, more philosophical, thematic pondering on the nature of truth and loveperhaps partly due to the always popping up comic relief, which is there all the way to the mystery-resolving end. But this is what makes this ghost story different, this lighter approachas when Roderick (Milland) constantly tries to calm his sister Pamela (Hussey) with pleas to her sanity, when he is really trying to soothe himself and not lose his own. One could say this is Hitchcockesque, except for its pervasiveness: Hitch usually uses his comic relief more sparingly; when he doesn't, the difference is that between a humoresque "The Trouble With Harry" and the allegro con suspense "North by Northwest." Interesting that writer Cornelia Otis Skinner plays Miss Holloway in "The Uninvited," as Russell had her first starring role as the author later this same year, 1944, in the movie version of the autobiographical novel "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay," co-written with Emily Kimbrough. Skinner gives us shades of Judith Anderson's Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock's "Rebecca," from four years earlierdark, absorbed, and perhaps self mesmerized. Such stylized, surrealistic theatrics might seem laughable to some audience members today, but back then they suited the character and the movie that both seek to give us an otherworldly sense of psychology. Today's world has brought psychology into its homes, where yesterday's world saw what was still a relatively new science as something foreign, strange. A movie, and performance, like this adds to the myth rather than the reality.
And too, it even has a Hitchcock feel and look, due to the direction of Lewis Allen and the cinematography of Charles Langwho was nominated for one of eighteen Academy Award nominations. (He won once for the 1934 "A Farewell to Arms" and is tied with Leon Shamroy for most cinematography nominations). This is black and white at its best, utilizing the contrast of light and dark to evoke mystery and dramathe use of shadows, dimly light rooms, candlelight, backlit and beneath-lit actors. Lewis Allen, who later moved from movies almost exclusively to American television, specializing in westerns, "Bonanza," and crime dramas, "Cannon," is not terribly original, probably more derivative and imitative of his English, suspense-film predecessor. So again, the film does not quite rise to superlatives as it lends itself to comparatives.
Another issue of mediocrity would be the lack of uniformity in the accents of Hussey and Russell: The American breaks through the British noticeably, unevenly. Now, there are plenty of examples throughout Golden Era movie-making when producers and directors did not require setting-appropriate accents of their actors. But there are plenty of occasions of great actresses (Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, Vivien Leigh) expertly capturing a culture-specific accent. However, there are just as many occasions of great actresses (Rosalind Russell, Maureen O'Sullivan, Ann Rutherford) totally ignoring a screaming requisite for an alteration in accent to suit the setting. Perhaps this is one issue that contemporary audiences who say they can't stand old movies sometimes find off-putting with classic cinemaalong with their other plaints, such as black and white, that they don't always understand. Failure for an actor to alter accent appropriate to atmosphere would not be tolerated by today's industry nor audience. Understandably soso, I've got to side with my contemporaries here: This acting malfunction is decidedly distracting, and as much as I love Gail Russell and Ruth Hussey for their form and performances elsewhere, I must fault them here. A tolerated liability back in the day, cannot be tolerated in this daythough I still tolerate, even embrace, Skinner's stagy, bizarre expressionistic, eccentric manner, for these acting techniques are intended to stand out as peculiar, to create an eerie aura that insinuates her character's vindictive nature. Skinner intends to be hystericalnot as in risible, but as in psychopathological.
Still, all in all, "The Uninvited" is fun and nice to look atafter all, that's what the Academy nominated it forif you can accept its peculiar shortcomings. It's not very scary, especially in an age of spooky cinema dominated by slashers, psychos and parody of slashers and psychos. But it's a well-told tale, and as the ghost chasers are chased by ghosts, it keeps one guessing for its hundred minute run.