Louis Hayward gets into some big-time trouble in HOUSE BY THE RIVER (courtesy Photofest)
HOUSE BY THE RIVER (Fritz Lang, 1950)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Tuesday, February 8, 2:45, 6:00, 9:15
Series continues through February 10
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
The 1950 lurid Gothic noir melodrama HOUSE BY THE RIVER might be midlevel Fritz Lang, but even second-rate Lang is worth watching. Louis Hayward stars as Stephen Byrne, a novelist who lives on the riverside of a small town with his wife, Marjorie (Jane Wyatt), and young maid, Emily (Dorothy Patrick), next to a very nosy neighbor, Mrs. Ambrose (Ann Shoemaker). On a lonely, unproductive afternoon, Stephen gets excited while allowing Emily to use the master bathroom to bathe and makes a creepy play for her that ends up with him accidentally strangling her. He forces his older brother, John (Lee Bowman), to help him dump the body in the river, and as the lies build, John is wracked with guilt but Stephen takes advantage of his suddenly newfound writing success and popularity. Based on the novel by A. P. Herbert, HOUSE BY THE RIVER is a dark psychological crime mystery that melds Robert Siodmak with Douglas Sirk, with shadowy black-and-white camerawork by Edward J. Cronjager and Lang’s sure hand lifting it above its B-movie elements, with creepy surprises waiting around every corner. HOUSE BY THE RIVER is screening with Lang’s 1953 murder mystery THE BLUE GARDENIA, starring Raymond Burr, Anne Baxter, and Richard Conte, as part of Film Forum’s Fritz Lang in Hollywood series, which continues through February 10 with the twin bill YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937) and YOU AND ME (1938).