Thursday 31 October 2024

The Uninvited (1944 Lewis Allen)

What a great artist Charles Lang was. If you closely look at the way he lights people lighting candles: he matches the flare up of the match, then dims it as being lit, then lights more for the candle to be bright. There's no electricity in the house, so this sort of thing happens a lot.

Brackett's diary indicates he was going through his usual emotions of elation and torment. About the rough cuts, he writes: "I made a great many notes - most of them on top of each other, due to a failure to turn a page in the dark." And another day, "The final day of real shooting on The Uninvited. Most of it Ray and the ghost..." It also reveals that Doane Harrison had brilliantly cut together the take where Gail Russell had really fallen as the cliff collapsed (injuring herself slightly) with a take of her being pulled up "in an incredibly credible way..."

Ray Milland is perhaps a shade too flip for us to take the ghost stuff as seriously as we might. (I am reminded that despite his Oscar for Lost Weekend, Wilder didn't really rate Milland as an actor - "I can say that now he's dead".) With Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Alan Napier.

Good script by Dodie Smith and Frank Partos. Good music from Victor Young.





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