The Uninvited (1944)

The Uninvited
Directed by Lewis Allen
Written by Dodie Smith and Frank Partos from the novel Uneasy Freehold by Dorothy Macardle
1944/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

Roderick Fitzgerald: [narration] They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of Devonshire and Cornwall and Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here… and sea fog… and eerie stories…

There are strong echoes of Rebecca in this ghost story.  And real live ghosts!  It falls short of the Hitchcock but still very watchable, especially for its beautiful cinematography.

Brother and sister Roderick (Ray Milland) and Pamela (Ruth Hussey) Fitzgerald are on holiday in Cornwall.  One day they come across an abandoned old mansion and Pamela falls in love with it.  They decide to pool all their money and make an offer to buy it.  They hear it is for sale by Commander Beech (Donald Crisp) and go to his home.  The Commander is not at home and his granddaughter Stella (Gail Russell) tells them the house is not for sale.  Fortunately or not, the Commander returns in the nick of time and is willing to sell for a suspiciously low price …  The siblings jump at it.

Roderick is of course smitten with the beautiful young Stella and starts to make friends. Then he takes off for London for three weeks.  While he is gone, it becomes clear to Pamela that the house is haunted.  There are moans in the night and the studio is unearthly cold and depressing.  When Roderick returns, Stella defies her grandfather’s strict prohibition against entering the house and accepts an invitation to dinner.  Immediately she feels the presence of her mother, who died under mysterious circumstances when she was just a toddler. Unfortunately some diabolical force also impels Stella to the edge of the cliff where her mother fell to her death.  She would have gone over if Roderick had not been there to stop her.

We hear a lot about the beauty and charm of Stella’s mother, Mary Merideth,  especially from the mother’s live-in nurse Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner) who idolized her.  We also learn various versions of the tragic tale of the love triangle between Mary, Stella’s father, and his artist’s model Carmel.  Then Stella falls into a catatonic trance when the Fitzgerald’s decide to try a fake seance to get Stella’s “mother’ to warn her away from the house.  Things take an even creepier turn when the grandfather sends Stella to Miss Holloway’s rest home for a cure …

Veteran cinematographer Charles Lang certainly pulled out all the stops to achieve the deep shadows which give this film such a wonderful atmosphere.  The restoration on the Criterion Collection DVD is beautiful.  The story is also interesting, although the tone is somehow kept too light to be truly horrifying.  I enjoyed it quite a bit nevertheless.

Charles Lang was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White for his work on The Uninvited.  The score by Victor Young has as its main theme the beautiful melody, later put to words as the song “Stella by Starlight”.  I am surprised it was not nominated.

Trailer