Stunning Gene Tierney, daughter of a down-to-earth Connecticut farmer who is a God-fearing son of the soil, is invited to stay for an extended visit with a terribly rich distant relative whom no one in the family has never met. He turns out to be Vincent Price, practicing for his later Edgar Allan Poe movies, his features emblazoned with "marks of weariness, marks of woe". He's a patroon in the Catskills and has a hundred sharecroppers working his vast estate. He's married to a mindless wife who soon dies mysteriously. This makes him available as a husband and, his being filthy rich and having a dozen servants and chilled out-of-season canolli and whatnot, Tierney falls in love with him. They marry. It develops -- well, all sorts of things develop -- and Price expires and Tierney goes back to the humble farm she's always called home.
I found it all pretty dull going. The chief problem is not with the acting or the direction. That's professional enough for most of the cast. Price is tall, sinister, with a ramrod for a spine and the face of a horse. And the magnificent cinematography is by Arthur Miller who, along with Joe August, Gregg Toland, and one or two others, was an absolute genius with black and white.
No, the problem is that Anya Seaton, who wrote the original novel, seems to have gorged herself on every other novel ever written about a young woman from a stern background who finds herself living in an old, dark mansion that guards some sort of secret. It's almost a pastiche, a shotgun approach. There are especially strong hints of "Rebecca" and "Jane Eyre" although none of them lead anywhere. There is, just for instance, a dark tower in which Price spends much of his time alone. No one is allowed in the chamber. And when Tierney finally discovers the secret, it's not an insane wife but something far more ordinary and tawdry, and it has no place in the narrative. The writers missed one cliché though. Tierney rides off alone in her carriage, leaving Dragonwyck and a mooning young doctor behind. The mansion is intact, whereas it should have been nothing more than a charred ruin.
It's clumsily written too. Characters come and go, and events take place, with no explanation. When Tierney first arrives at Dragonwyck, the only person who seems entirely candid with her is Spring Byington as the somewhat dotty old maid. She disappears like King Lear's fool half-way through. Jessica Tandy, in an early role as an Irish maid, is "a loathsome cripple" who plays an important part in the story and yet is not there for her friend Tierney's departure. Somewhere along the line the resentful sharecroppers are given some kind of lease to buy by the governor of New York, but any important consequence was lost in the editing. Price and Dragonwyck may be poorer for the collapse of the patroon system but neither of them show it. A few cobwebs would have helped, or a rotting cake and dusty drapes. Where is Miss Haversham when you need her?
The young doctor is Glen Langan, who has the mellifluous voice of an announcer on an FM radio station that plays nothing but Debussy, and the features of a mannequin in an upscale department store window. Doctors tend to be of two types in movies like this. They are either young, poor, modest country doctors, or they're mad scientists. Langan occupies the first set, except that, contrary to expectations, he may fall for Tierney (who wouldn't?) but she has no interest in him as a lover.
Others might enjoy it more than I did. I liked "Rebecca" and the various versions of "Jane Eyre" but this was a long, slow slog. Good luck.
I found it all pretty dull going. The chief problem is not with the acting or the direction. That's professional enough for most of the cast. Price is tall, sinister, with a ramrod for a spine and the face of a horse. And the magnificent cinematography is by Arthur Miller who, along with Joe August, Gregg Toland, and one or two others, was an absolute genius with black and white.
No, the problem is that Anya Seaton, who wrote the original novel, seems to have gorged herself on every other novel ever written about a young woman from a stern background who finds herself living in an old, dark mansion that guards some sort of secret. It's almost a pastiche, a shotgun approach. There are especially strong hints of "Rebecca" and "Jane Eyre" although none of them lead anywhere. There is, just for instance, a dark tower in which Price spends much of his time alone. No one is allowed in the chamber. And when Tierney finally discovers the secret, it's not an insane wife but something far more ordinary and tawdry, and it has no place in the narrative. The writers missed one cliché though. Tierney rides off alone in her carriage, leaving Dragonwyck and a mooning young doctor behind. The mansion is intact, whereas it should have been nothing more than a charred ruin.
It's clumsily written too. Characters come and go, and events take place, with no explanation. When Tierney first arrives at Dragonwyck, the only person who seems entirely candid with her is Spring Byington as the somewhat dotty old maid. She disappears like King Lear's fool half-way through. Jessica Tandy, in an early role as an Irish maid, is "a loathsome cripple" who plays an important part in the story and yet is not there for her friend Tierney's departure. Somewhere along the line the resentful sharecroppers are given some kind of lease to buy by the governor of New York, but any important consequence was lost in the editing. Price and Dragonwyck may be poorer for the collapse of the patroon system but neither of them show it. A few cobwebs would have helped, or a rotting cake and dusty drapes. Where is Miss Haversham when you need her?
The young doctor is Glen Langan, who has the mellifluous voice of an announcer on an FM radio station that plays nothing but Debussy, and the features of a mannequin in an upscale department store window. Doctors tend to be of two types in movies like this. They are either young, poor, modest country doctors, or they're mad scientists. Langan occupies the first set, except that, contrary to expectations, he may fall for Tierney (who wouldn't?) but she has no interest in him as a lover.
Others might enjoy it more than I did. I liked "Rebecca" and the various versions of "Jane Eyre" but this was a long, slow slog. Good luck.