House by the River (1950)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
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. - Actors:
- Louis Hayward, Lee Bowman, Jane Wyatt, Dorothy Patrick, Ann Shoemaker, Jody Gilbert, Peter Brocco, Howland Chamberlain, Margaret Seddon, Sarah Padden, Kathleen Freeman, Will Wright, Leslie Kimmell, Effie Laird, Edgar Caldwell, Edward Clark, Frank Dae, Watson Downs, Edythe Elliott, William Fawcett
- Directors:
- Fritz Lang
- Producers:
- Howard Welsch
- Writers:
- Mel Dinelli, A.P. Herbert
- Aka:
- Floodtide
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Thrillers
- Collections:
- The Instant Expert's Guide to: Fritz Lang
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Reviews (1) of House by the River
Gothic Noir. - House by the River review by Steve
After The Secret Beyond the Door flopped, three years passed until Lang found himself making House by the River for low budget studio Republic. Surely his lowest point in Hollywood. It did no better than its predecessor, and lay forgotten for years until the last copy was saved and restored in France in the seventies. And then positively reappraised.
Unlike very nearly all film noir, this is isn't contemporary. It is set in Victorian New England, and has the melancholy minor chords of gothic horror (it feels like a Val Lewton film). Louis Hayward is Stephen Byrne, a struggling middle aged novelist who kills the attractive domestic worker he employs and convinces his brother to help him sink her body in the river that runs past the back of his house. When the body is found, Byrne makes sure the police suspect the innocent brother.
Hayward is convinced that he must draw from life in his writing, and so starts to spin the thoughts that this (now clearly insane) author wants to suppress into his next novel. Byrne feels like the kind of monomaniac found in the stories of Edgar Allen Poe.
As is typical with Lang, there is a strong element of Freudian MacGuffin, with the depths of the river representing the subconscious of Byrne's mind, occasionally releasing troublesome detritus to the surface. This is another idiosyncratic work by Lang, hardly impaired by reduced circumstances. Many noir directors would shoot on deep but narrow sets with deep focus, to get more action into a single cut to save money and to unlock space cramped by the narrow frame. Lang turns that into a virtue and a common motif, his slender corridors revealed by layers of doors which conceal secrets or repressions.