Fridays in October | 13 Films
TCM is going Goth in October.
Every Friday evening, Ben Mankiewicz presents movies featuring brooding, often dangerous and even deadly men. Creepy foreboding castles and mansions filled with secrets, hidden rooms and ghosts that often feel like they are alive, women in peril who find themselves driven mad by the men in their lives and the duality of human nature.
The series kicks off Oct 6 with the theme of “Best Selling Literature,” including the classic romances by the Brontë sisters Charlotte and Emily. There have been many adaptations of Emily Bronte’s beloved 1847 novel “Wuthering Heights,” but none matched the 1939 version directed by William Wyler and starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as the ill-fated lovers Heathcliff and Cathy. Nominated for eight Oscars, it won for Gregg Toland’s black-and-white Cinematography.
Just as with “Wuthering Heights,” Charlotte Brontë’s romantic 1847 novel “Jane Eyre” has been a favorite in film, TV and even theater. And TCM is airing the hit 1943 version starring Joan Fontaine as a young woman hired to be the governess of the daughter (Margaret O’Brien) of Edward Rochester (Orson Welles), the handsome, secretive lord of the manor. Directed by Robert Stevenson, who would helm another classic in 1964 about a nanny named Mary Poppins, Jane Eyre exudes atmosphere thanks to George Barnes’ cinematography and Bernard Herrmann’s evocative score.
Nearly a century after the Brontës’ books were published, Anya Seton penned “Dragonwyck” in 1944. Seton was inspired by “Jane Eyre’ as well as “Bluebeard.” Set in 1844, the story revolves around feisty Miranda (Gene Tierney) who hates her life on a small Connecticut farm where she is ruled with an iron fist by her Bible-thumping father (Walter Huston). Miranda dreams of a better life full of excitement and money. And she gets her wish when a distant relative (Vincent Price) writes inquiring if one of the daughters can come to his gloomy estate Dragonwyck in the Hudson Valley and take care of his daughter.
Miranda is immediately entranced by Price’s Nicholas even though he is entrenched in the Dutch patroon system demanding obedience and payment from the families who work his land. Nicholas has no love for his wife, who spends most of her time eating or resting in bed, because she has not given him a son. Suffering from a cold, his wife soon dies after eating a piece of cake given to her by Nicholas. It isn’t long after her death that the unbelievably naïve Miranda and Nicholas marry. She soon becomes pregnant, but when their son dies soon after his birth, Nicholas goes off the deep end, becoming a drug addict while hiding himself in an attic room.
The film marked the directorial debut of screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who would win back-to-back Oscars for screenplay and direction for 1949’s A Letter to Three Wives and 1950’s All About Eve. Dragonwyck didn’t impress, including with the New York Times.
“Mr. Mankiewicz and his associates have done the whole thing so ponderously that they have drained it of electric essence, and even of the element of surprise. Vincent Price gives a picturesque performance of the regal and godless patroon, using his face and his carriage to demonstrate insolence, that’s all. Clean shaven and elegantly tailored, he still makes a formidable Bluebeard, and his moments of suave diabolism are about the best in the film.”
Wilde’s 1891 novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” had been filmed several times before MGM released its exquisite 1945 adaptation directed by Albert Lewin. Hurd Hatfield stars as the glacially handsome young Dorian Gray whose portrait is being painted by a popular artist. During one session, he meets and his befriended by the wealthy, hedonistic Lord Wotton (George Sanders) who leads Dorian into a life of depravity. Realizing that his portrait will remain forever young while he grows old, Dorian sells his soul to remain forever young while his portrait reflects his sins and debauchery.
Dorian Gray is best known for the Oscar-nominated turn of Angela Lansbury as Sibyl Vane, the sweet music hall singer that Dorian loves but who ends up killing herself when he shuns her.
The film was also nominated for its sumptuous art direction and won for Harry Stradling Sr’s cinematography. Though Dorian Gray is in black and white, the gruesome painting is in vivid Technicolor. Nearly 80 years after its release, the reveal is still quite shocking.
“Ungentlemanly Callers” is the theme for the Oct. 13 programming. The highlight of the evening are the two versions of Gaslight, the glossy 1944 MGM classic starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Angela Lansbury in her film debut and the 1940 British thriller starring Diana Wynyard and Anton Walbrook.
The films were based on Patrick Hamilton’s hit 1938 British play “Gas Light,” which opened on Broadway in 1941 as “Angel Street” starring Vincent Price. In the 1944 film version directed by George Cukor, Bergman plays the niece of an opera singer who was murdered in her home. Bergman’s Paula was sent off to Italy to train to become an opera singer. But instead of becoming an opera singer she becomes the wife of a handsome accompanist (Boyer) who insists that they return to London and her aunt’s house. When they return home, Boyer’s Gregory begins his assault on the already fragile Paula, accusing her of stealing and being forgetful. Paula receives no sympathy from the saucy maid Nancy (Lansbury) who flirts with Gregory. Paula begins to question her sanity when she hears noises coming from the attic and the gaslight in her bedroom flickers into near darkness. Thank goodness, salvation comes in the guise of a handsome Scotland Yard detective (Joseph Cotten).
The New York Times praised the two stars: “With Mr. Boyer doing the driving in his best dead-pan hypnotic style, while the flames flicker strangely in the gas-jets and the mood music bongs with heavy threats, it is no wonder that Miss Bergman goes to pieces in a most distressing way. Both of these popular performers play their roles right to the hilt.”
Nominated for seven Oscars including Best Film, Best Actor and Supporting Actress, Gaslight earned Ingrid Bergman her first of three Academy Awards, as well as an Oscar for its black and white Art Direction.
The 1940 version, directed by veteran Thorold Dickinson, was nearly destroyed. When MGM bought the rights to the Hamilton play, they ordered all copies of the film demolished and even tried to get the negative destroyed. Thank goodness, they didn’t achieve their goal. According to TCM.com, MGM ordered the destruction because “the original had won high critical praise, the studio hoped in this manner to avoid unfavorable comparisons to the lavishly produced remake. Indeed, many critics still feel that the British version is superior.”
And in many ways, it is.
The British production sticks much closer to the original play and Walbrook, best known for 1948’s The Red Shoes, creates the ultimate monster, a murderous psychopath without an ounce of humanity in his bones. It’s truly a masterful and chilling performance.
The film wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1952 as The Murder in Thornton Square.
The same year MGM released Gaslight, RKO presented its own Gothic thriller in Experiment Perilous directed by Jacques Tourneur who had come to fame helming the Val Lewton horror films, Cat People (1942) and The Leopard Man (1943). In this outing, a psychiatrist named Huntington (George Brent) becomes involved with a wealthy man (Paul Lukas) and his beautiful, younger wife Allida (Hedy Lamarr). Lukas’ Nick confides to the good doctor that he thinks his wife is going insane. But when Huntington reads the journals of Nick’s late sister, he realizes that Nick is obsessed with his wife and has already killed for her. To make matters worse, Nick is also trying to poison their son’s relationship with her.
Chris Fujiwara, author of “Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall,” praises Lamarr’s performance stating she “somehow suggests both fragile inadequacy…and modest assurance. Much of the intense, evanescent eroticism of the film can be attributed to her.”
Set for Oct. 20 are “Supernatural Stories” leading off with the adored 1947 spirited romance The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which reunited Gene Tierney with director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It’s a lovely romantic film about the relationship between a young widow who moves with her daughter (Natalie Wood) and maid into a coastal cottage only to learn the abode is haunted by the ghost (Rex Harrison) of rather cantankerous sea captain. The film boasts a smart script by Philip Dunne, the Oscar-nominated Cinematography of Charles Lang and a haunting score by Bernard Herrmann. Ironically, the 1968-70 TV series version of the movie was transformed into a sitcom replete with a laugh track.
The scariest film airing Oct. 20 is a ghost story without a ghost, Robert Wise’s 1963 The Haunting, based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel “The Haunting of Hill House.” Richard Johnson plays an anthropology professor with an obsessive interest in the occult who is interested in a house in England that has a long history of paranormal activity. He invites the heir to the mansion (Russ Tamblyn), a psychic (Claire Bloom) and the fragile young woman (Julie Harris) who spent most of her adult life taking care of her mother. When the trio arrives, Harris’ Eleanor connects to the house which seems to have a life of its own and she begins to mentally collapse.
Though Wise was best known for his Oscar-winning musicals, 1961’s West Side Story and 1965’s The Sound of Music, he had cut his directing teeth with such Val Lewton atmospheric horror films as 1945’s The Body Snatcher.
“Val Lewton’s favorite theme was the greatest thing that people had was fear of the unknown,” Wise said in a 2000 L.A. Times interview. “What’s that in the shadows back there? That noise? That’s what he played on. So, when I did ‘The Haunting,’ it was kind of a tribute to him. I’ve had so many people say to me about ‘The Haunting’ that it is ‘the scariest film I have ever seen.’ But I didn’t show anything. It was just suggestive.”
The journey ends Oct. 27 with “Gothic Horror” and a spinetingling lineup including James Whale’s classics of the genre, Frankenstein (1931)and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Also included are Roger Corman’s House of Usher (1960) with Vincent Price, The Phantom of the Opera (1925) with an extraordinary performance by the Man of a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney, and Rouben Mamoulian’s brilliant pre-Code Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s landmark novel exploring the duality of man.
Star Fredric March earned his first of two Best Actor Oscars for his truly horrifying turn as the very model of a Victorian gentleman and the feral beast Mr. Hyde. Cinematographer Karl Struss’ use of red-and-white filters on the black-and-white film created the illusion that Jekyll was transforming into Hyde right before audiences’ eyes.
In a 1932 interview, March noted that he conceived Hyde as “more than just Dr. Jekyll’s inhibited evil nature. I tried to show the devastating results in Dr. Jekyll as well. To me, those repeated appearances of the beast within him were more than just a mental strain on Jekyll-they crushed him physically as well”.
