Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 23-July-11
Spoiler Rating: High

House by the River (1950)

Despite being set in an era of bygone gentility, Fritz Lang's House by the River is a veritable cesspool of carnal cravings, sibling rivalry, scandal, and murder. The house in question is a grand old Victorian, which gives the film a nice gothic flavor, but the key to the story is the river. Rather than an instrument to wash things clean, it represents the darkness inside men and the inexorable flow of fate. For into its depths goes the corpse of a maidservant killed by her employer. And up from its depths the body rises demanding remembrance and retribution.

A master of grim atmosphere, Lang tells the tale with a sure hand and only a slight hiccup at the end. The maid is strangled by an unsuccessful novelist named Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) as he attempts a seduction or rape that he doesn't want his neighbor to hear. Stephen's brother John (Lee Bowman) arrives immediately after the murder and becomes an accomplice against his better judgment. John is obviously in love with his sister-in-law — she's his first thought when he sees Stephen's worried face — and Stephen exploits this to get John's help in dumping the body. Along with his infatuation, John's most notable trait is a limp. This detail invites the viewer to imagine elements of back story, e.g., how the lovely Marjorie (Jane Wyatt) was fond of both brothers but married Stephen because he was "whole," or how Stephen has always lorded it over John because of his physical superiority.

For whatever reason (perhaps because he's simply evil), Stephen feels little remorse about the killing or letting his brother sweat the guilt. On the contrary, he uses the publicity generated by the maid's disappearance to promote his books and even begins writing a novel based on the murder he committed. Marjorie notices his increased boorishness and John's mounting distress but doesn't immediately grasp their significance. It isn't until the corpse is found and an inquest is held that she begins to sense something gravely wrong, especially as the inquest appears to point to John as the killer.

The ending of House by the River is predictable, which is okay because of foreshadowing and the standards of gothic murder. Its weakness lies in implausibility. Karma works in awkward ways to give Stephen what he has coming, with the house suddenly emerging as a character where before it was a backdrop. Yet the ending does use John's deformity to good effect, which makes inexorable fate quite satisfying.

Copyright © 2011 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.