A pleasingly uncomplicated serving of brooding Victorian melodrama, garnished with suffrage but swathed mainly in pure Gothic, with sufficient sex and violence to make 'The Wicked Lady' look like The Singing Nun. Valerie Hobson plays a humble but socially aspiring paid companion who, by turn of fortune, is invited to serve as governess at her aristocratic extended family's estate, and fulfils her dreams of status by marrying her cousin and becoming beneficiary. She'd reckoned without disgruntled steward Granger's hereditary (but legally invalid through illegitimacy) heir though, with whom she soon entangles herself in lurid romantic complications.
Guy Green would later be director of photography on David Lean's 'Oliver Twist' and 'Great Expectations', and his framing and composition work here is extremely attractive and atmospheric and compliments the film's (then unconventionally) dour tone; even though the use of strikingly vivid Technicolour is only intermittently expressive or evocative, and even then more or less in the first half only. Whilst this film seems to be celebrated for its photography, I found the most striking effect to be the opening montage of 3 shots following the urgent course of a horse-drawn carriage; past an autumnal tree jutting out ominously against a twilight sky, through a deserted and unnaturally silent wood, up to the imposing steps of an unwelcoming manor house. This sequence is in itself a mini-movie, a precursor to the style which would come to be most closely associated with the best of the period Hammer Horror films.
This is Allegret's only notable English language film, and for the first half his directorial style faintly echoes contemporary Val Lewtonseque psychological horror as the camera prowls around 'Clare Hall', lurking and listening from the shadows and making us fear whatever emotionally and psychologically charged shocks may be lying in wait. It also puts the familiar yet bizarre 'family ghost story', based upon the house's morbid crest, in danger of becoming faintly creditable.
It is also of note as an early demonstration of the power of the star compromising the finished film. Originally, the murder was to have been committed by the Granger character in drag, but he refused to go along with this despite the narrative cohesion it would have lent the film in its dealings with plundering gypsies and subsequent courtroom proceedings. This plot angle was instead replaced with run-of-the-mill moralistic melodrama, very much contrary to the film's sombre first hour. The remaining mixture of sensationalism with plenty of retribution, but not recrimination, was still potent enough to make the film a huge commercial loss in its day (it all but sank its studio Cineguild), but the fact that the cast is merely proficient did not help. The public had a well-demonstrated fondness for over-the-top floridness in this sort of thing, and even today, only Michael Gough's despotic junior lord seems sufficiently villainous enough to rouse any audience reaction. It still however makes fascinating comparison with Rank's 'Jassy' and Ealing's 'Saraband For Dead Lovers', in terms of (then) hugely expensive colour period efforts that seemed to have been conceived for more than just costume for costume's sake.
Guy Green would later be director of photography on David Lean's 'Oliver Twist' and 'Great Expectations', and his framing and composition work here is extremely attractive and atmospheric and compliments the film's (then unconventionally) dour tone; even though the use of strikingly vivid Technicolour is only intermittently expressive or evocative, and even then more or less in the first half only. Whilst this film seems to be celebrated for its photography, I found the most striking effect to be the opening montage of 3 shots following the urgent course of a horse-drawn carriage; past an autumnal tree jutting out ominously against a twilight sky, through a deserted and unnaturally silent wood, up to the imposing steps of an unwelcoming manor house. This sequence is in itself a mini-movie, a precursor to the style which would come to be most closely associated with the best of the period Hammer Horror films.
This is Allegret's only notable English language film, and for the first half his directorial style faintly echoes contemporary Val Lewtonseque psychological horror as the camera prowls around 'Clare Hall', lurking and listening from the shadows and making us fear whatever emotionally and psychologically charged shocks may be lying in wait. It also puts the familiar yet bizarre 'family ghost story', based upon the house's morbid crest, in danger of becoming faintly creditable.
It is also of note as an early demonstration of the power of the star compromising the finished film. Originally, the murder was to have been committed by the Granger character in drag, but he refused to go along with this despite the narrative cohesion it would have lent the film in its dealings with plundering gypsies and subsequent courtroom proceedings. This plot angle was instead replaced with run-of-the-mill moralistic melodrama, very much contrary to the film's sombre first hour. The remaining mixture of sensationalism with plenty of retribution, but not recrimination, was still potent enough to make the film a huge commercial loss in its day (it all but sank its studio Cineguild), but the fact that the cast is merely proficient did not help. The public had a well-demonstrated fondness for over-the-top floridness in this sort of thing, and even today, only Michael Gough's despotic junior lord seems sufficiently villainous enough to rouse any audience reaction. It still however makes fascinating comparison with Rank's 'Jassy' and Ealing's 'Saraband For Dead Lovers', in terms of (then) hugely expensive colour period efforts that seemed to have been conceived for more than just costume for costume's sake.