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Staring: Louis Hayward, Jane Wyatt, Lee Bowman, Dorothy Patrick, Ann Shoemaker
Director: Fritz Lang
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Product Details
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Kino Video
EAN: 0738329041922
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, NTSC
Label: Kino Video
Manufacturer: Kino Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Kino Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2005-11-22
Running Time: 88
Studio: Kino Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1950-03-25

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Editorial Review
Product Description
Studio: Kino International Release Date: 11/22/2005 Run time: 85 minutes

Amazon.com
Virtually unseeable for half a century, House by the River, the rarest of Fritz Lang's American films, proves to be an atmospheric serving of Southern Gothic with style and perversity to burn. This is a happy surprise, given that the film was made at a low point in Lang's career, at a Poverty Row studio, with a low-wattage cast. Louis Hayward--whose dark, spoiled good looks and insinuating smile suggest Orson Welles' tawdry evil twin--plays an effete author in a small 19th-century town. One hot, lazy afternoon he's tempted (in a brilliantly directed scene) by thoughts of the comely maid soaking in his upstairs bathroom. There follows an awkward pass, a hand over her mouth, and suddenly he finds himself an accidental murderer. With a dead body to get rid of, living by a river comes in handy. But on this river, secrets have a way of returning with the tide.

The script by Mel Dinelli (who had just written the trim 1949 thriller The Window) ably milks the suspense, and there's a creepy moonlit search by rowboat for the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't corpse. The failed novelist, beginning to relish his guilt, acquires fresh inspiration as a writer and also becomes a cagy manipulator of other people, notably the wife (Jane Wyatt) who doesn't know what he's done, and the crippled brother (Lee Bowman) who does. Making a virtue of production resources only slightly upscale of Edgar G. Ulmer, Lang turns the titular domicile into an Expressionist hothouse where lace curtains yield a web of shadows, potted plants throw jagged black spears across high-key faces, and the breeze from the river is anything but fresh. Mastered from British archival materials, the DVD gleams like a cutlery-store window. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

Gem from Budget Row, 2007-05-20
This shows what a great director like Fritz Lang can do with peanuts. Laughton must have seen this for his "Night of the Hunter", some of the feel is so similar. "Hunter" is superior because the script and cast are, but Jane Wyatt is one of the most underrated talents ever in films, in part because of the Red Scare blacklist of which she was a victim. The other leads are good but the film suffers from mediocre talent in the supporting roles. All the same, this is the kind of film Manny Farber used to champion in his reviews. Pulpy and full bodied. If the budget had been higher, the studio better, this would be talked about in hushed tones.

There is a tide, 2010-02-07
Early in this 1950 Gothic thriller, the central character, a psychopathic turn-of-the-century Southern novelist named Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) suggests his beautiful blonde maid use his wife's bath; he stands outside from his garden and watches with pleasure as the light to the bathroom turns on, and then listens for the bathwater gurgling down the outside drain. The creepy fetishism warns us both of what he will want from her and that there's something not quite right with him. Thus bravura sequence amply illustrates how even Fritz Lang's most obscure films are well worth watching; this Poverty Row Gothic is much more intriguing than many of the major studio pictures of the same time. Byrne molests the maid and strangles her when he's afraid he'll be discovered by a neighbor, and soon he has enlisted his brother (Lee Bowman) to hide the crime both from the police and from his wife (Jane Wyatt); eventually, after the submerged corpse of the maid resurfaces in the river outside his house, he manages to frame his brother for the crime.

The incredible sequence when Hayward goes onto the river to recover the formerly weighted sack containing the maid's corpse is unlike anything else in the movie, and clearly (as others here have noted) seems to have influenced the moonlit river scenes in Charles Laughton's later THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER; Lang's ability to suggest something uncanny about the sack--which is never quite where you (or Hayward) thought it would be is a virtuoso display of how editing, lighting, and mise-en-scene can together work wonders with your mind. The film also seems to have influenced Edward Gorey through its unusual period costumes and set design; the eerie narrow tall windows of the titular house and its underlighting seem straight out of one of Gorey's small books, as do the women's corsets and constricting 1890s gowns. Lee Bowman, unfortunately, makes almost no impression as the brother, and although the camera loved Jane Wyatt's beauty, and she has a ringing speaking voice, she's a bit too infuriatingly high-minded. But Louis Hayward's wild staring eyes seem perfectly in keeping with the strange Expressionistic tone of the film, and there's a really unusual and memorable performance by the massive, prim Jody Gilbert as Bowman's bossy and infatuated housekeeper. The last five minutes of the film are completely wild--and it perhaps could have ended no less berserkly.

The Trouble with Emily . . ., 2009-03-07
Although director Fritz Lang's atmospheric exercise in Southern gothic "House by the River" doesn't rank as one of his major films, such as "M," "Metropolis," "Fury," or "The Big Heat," this morbid Victorian melodrama about murder most foul contains enough of his characteristic themes to make it rewarding for people who fancy his films. Several reasons account for its lackluster stature. First, Republic Studios produced and released "House by the River" and Republic wasn't a prominent studio like MGM, Warner Brothers, Paramount, or Twentieth Century Fox, though great directors such as Orson Welles and John Ford had made pictures at Republic. Second, the talent is strictly second tier. Louis Hayward never achieved the stardom of earlier Lang stars, such as Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Ray Milland, and Walter Pidgeon. Nevertheless, Hayward acquits himself splendidly in the role of a treacherous murderer who has no qualms about doing whatever it takes to save his neck, even if it means shifting the blame to his brother. The remainder of the cast is serviceable, except for Jody Gilbert who plays a fatuous housekeeper to the protagonist's brother. Still, nobody can top the wicked Hayward whose character goes from one extreme, sniveling fear at the thought of being arrested to obnoxious egotism.

"House by the River" is confined largely to studio sets. First, the murder occurs in the protagonist's dimly lighted mansion. Second, some scenes unfold in his crippled brother's house--one room. Third, the courtroom is the setting for an inquest. Fourth, the protagonist and his brother ply the river in a boat in long shots of an actual river and a studio tank for the closer shots. Fifth, some scenes transpire on the grounds of the mansion and on a nearby dock. All in all, "House by the River" is appropriately claustrophobic. The river takes on an eerie character of its own, especially the jumping fish that preys on the protagonist's paranoia. Despite its modest surrounding, Lang and his cinematographer do an excellent job of conveying information about the various characters. The imagery has a haunting quality that indicates that Lang was a master of crime movies, even though he labored under less than stellar conditions. Although the melodrama is conventional in every sense of the word, Lang's camerawork and the mise-en-scene that he evokes is far from ordinary. He does a terrific job of depicting suspicion, murder, paranoia, and the toll that gossip takes on an individual.

The problem with "House by the River" is that you know what is going to happen for the most part because Hollywood movies of the 1950s always punished the murderer. In other words, crime never paid and the villains got their comeuppance. Scenarist Mel Dinelli derived his screenplay from A. P. Herbert's novel. Lang and he cultivate a modicum of suspense, but not enough to have you wringing your hands. Actually, it is fun--in a perverse way--to watch the
unscrupulous Hayward tries to get away with his crime, but like previous Lang murderers, he is so warped that he can never escape the consequences of his acts.

A middling crime novelist, Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward of "Anthony Adverse") murders his wife's maid, Emily (Dorothy Patrick of "Follow Me Quietly"), by accident. Stephen accosts her as she descends the stair after bathing in his wife's bathroom and wearing her perfume and tries to kiss her. It seems that Stephen had a drink and looked up to see a pair of curvaceous thighs coming down the stairs and couldn't control himself. Emily deflects his lustful advances, screams when he refuses to let her pass, and keeps on screaming irrationally until he strangles her to death. Stephen is distracted by the appearance of a nosy next door neighbor, Mrs. Ambrose (Anne Shoemaker of "They Won't Forget"), and assures Emily that he will release her if she only shuts up. He is too worried about what Mrs. Ambrose will tell the community that he doesn't realize his own strength. Tragically, Emily doesn't stop screaming and Stephen kills her with his bare hands. No sooner has Stephen murdered her than sometime comes knocking at his door. Stephen cowers near the corpse hoping that the individual at the door will go away. Just when he thinks this person has left, the individual surprises Stephen and enters by the back door. Stephen is relieved when he realizes that it is only his crippled brother John (Lee Bowman of "Bataan") who walks with a limp and earns his living as an accountant. Stephen convinces John not to go the police because he fears that the authorities won't believe his story. Initially, Stephen lies to John and tells him that Emily fell down the stairs. John spots the marks on Emily's throat and knows that she has been strangled. Against his best instincts, John decides to aid and abet Stephen. It seems that John has helped Stephen out of other jams. Just when John decides to change his mind, Stephen lies that his wife Marjorie (Jane Wyatt) is going to have a baby. Reluctantly, John helps Stephen dispose of the body in the river. Earlier, in the first scenes, Mrs. Ambrose complained that the currents of the river conveyed hideous sites. Lang foreshadows the role that the river will play in Stephen's future. Just when he thinks that he is free and clear, here comes Mrs. Ambrose complaining again about the flotsam in the river. John is especially terrified because he learns to his chagrin that the sack that they stashed Emily in has his name stenciled on it.

Anyway, Stephen and John dispose of Emily's body in the river, but the body comes back on them like everything else. John's guilty conscience gets the best of him and his nosy housekeeper, Miss Bantam (Jody Gilbert of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"), suggests that his erratic behavior after Emily's mysterious disappearance is proof that he had something to do with her death. Meanwhile, Stephen unravels and tries to kill his own brother and implicate him for Emily's death. The authorities never catch up with Stephen. His paranoia proves his undoing in a wild comeuppance that has him strangling himself in a curtain that he believes his Emily. As he did in "Fury," Lang uses public opinion generated by gossip to condemn an essentially innocent but misguided character. Good performances, good atmosphere, and Lang's sure hand at the helm make this melodrama better than a lesser director would have made it. While it isn't a comedy, "House by the River" seems to foreshadow "The Trouble with Harry," the Hitchcock movie about a corpse that keeps showing up and driving people crazy.

Gothic thriller at its best, 2009-04-30
Fritz Lang's "House by the River" is not a true film noir, but more properly a gothic mystery or thriller. As such, it compares favorably with Robert Siodmak's "The Spiral Staircase" as the best of the genre. In movies of this type, atmosphere plays a major role, and this one has it in spades: the gloomy old houses, the tidal creek that carries debris out to sea and then washes them back again, the corpse that returns at a most inopportune time for the killer. The print and sound quality are above average for a home video not released by a major studio, though I wish they had included subtitles.

beautifully photographed, typically downbeat but minor Lang, 2009-09-28
Fritz Lang was the first director I ever fell in love with, probably 20 years ago. I've been slowly (very slowly) going through his whole filmography and I don't have too many left. This was number 23 (of 37 to date) and though it's not one of the better ones, it still offers plenty of Lang's typically despairing pleasures. Edward Cronjager's awesome heavily shadowed b&w photography lets us know immediately that we're in noir-ish territory (though the turn-of-the century coastal setting - gulf coast? never made explicit that I recall - isn't typical) as failing writer Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) has a little "accident" involving his new maid and must spend the rest of the movie covering up and trying to shift the blame for her disappearance on much stabler and saner brother John (Lee Bowman).

The suspense builds steadily, with a fine courtroom scene that's nicely underplayed, and for a while I though this might end up being one of Lang's greats, but the finish is disappointingly heavy-handed and obvious, though the laugh that escaped me almost made it worth it - an oh-I-can't-believe-it sort of thing. Jane Wyatt is beautiful as always but doesn't have enough to do; Hayward is the real star here though, progressing realistically from merely a self-absorbed heel to a real psychopath; I wonder why he didn't have more of a career? The sets are nicely done and while the film may not feel wholly at place in Southern Gothic territory, at least it doesn't seem like Los Angeles either. Great music by George Antheil. This Kino DVD is a pretty decent transfer.

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