House by the River (1950)

Directed by Fritz Lang; produced by Howard Welsch

Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward), a writer living with his wife in a small town in Victorian-era America, conceives a playful passion for their new maid (Dorothy Patrick). Fortified by wine one night, Byrne makes advances to the maid; she resists and, as he struggles to restrain her, she is killed. Terrified, Byrne begs his brother, John (Lee Bowman) for help. Reluctantly, John agrees, having always assisted his sibling in trouble. But the deed comes back to haunt John, as evidence of murder accumulates against him, and not Stephen.

With a rather intriguing premise, House by the River’s best feature is its story. It alternates between the (more or less) innocent John, being slowly squeezed in a vice of suspicion, and Stephen, who sees his salvation in the increasing pressure on his brother. However, the story is drowned by lesser qualities.

Though directed by Fritz Lang, and possessing a number of good scenes and images, the direction is not particularly noteworthy. The script does not do justice to the story. The tale originated in a novel by A. P. Herbert, which may have been better than the screenplay by Mel Dinelli: Dinelli’s other movie work was uneven, the higher end represented by The Window and The Spiral Staircase.

In House by the River, however, a number of elements are introduced, each of which could have led to something, or added to the movie. Instead, they prompt the viewer on, only to abandon him. For instance, when the maid’s body is hidden in the river, a fish jumps from the water and startles Stephen. On a couple of other occasions, a bright or silvery object, subconsciously reminding him of the fish, brings him back to his crime. But this feature is insignificant in the story.

And again, the detective (Will Wright) in the case seems, despite his casual acceptance of Stephen’s story, to guess the guilty party’s identity, knowledge shared by the district attorney (Howland Chamberlain). Yet the suspicions of this canny pair don’t play a part in the story’s resolution. That resolution, as embodied in the climax, is almost indefinite, and, frankly, unsatisfactory; another disappointment.

The acting is adequate. Bowman and Wyatt come off best. Hayward has a vague accent (he was born in South Africa) which gives Stephen a European sound; that, in turn, makes one wonder how he could have been raised with John, or if he was. There is no reference to it. Hayward has the annoying habit of looking a little bemused at a question or comment, then eyeing the speaker coyly and grinning mischievously, like a boy who has discovered a means of escaping a dread punishment. That, I expect, was the precise intent of the direction, but when it happens not just several times in the movie, but several times in a conversation, and in several conversations, it becomes tiresome. The viewer may wonder why that isn’t seen as a sign of deception by other characters, like a nose growing in length.

And finally, there is a lack of conviction in the setting. For the most part, the look is of the 1890s, but the feel is absent. What there is comes across as self-conscious. House by the River gives the impression of being set in the nineteenth century solely because the producers stumbled across a cache of costumes left over from another movie, and thought it would be a neat element to include. A light-weight musical such as In the Good Old Summertime has more realism.

With a small treasure of a plot, House by the River squanders its credit with apathetic writing, average acting and uninspired directing.