The Uninvited ****½ (1944, Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Gail Russell, Donald Crisp) – Classic Movie Review 2279

Director Lewis Allen’s 1944 classic supernatural mystery romance is a superlatively spooky ghost story, treated admirably seriously, about a brother and sister (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) having a holiday on Cornwall, where they fall in love with, and soon move into, Windward House, an abandoned chintzy English seaside home.

Composer Roderick ‘Rick’ Fitzgerald (Milland) and his sister Pamela (Hussey) soon find the reason they are able to buy the beautiful gothic mansion on Cornwall’s rocky seacoast unusually cheaply from Commander Beech (Donald Crisp) is the house’s unsavoury past. Rick and Pamela meet Beech’s weird 20-year-old granddaughter Stella Meredith (Gail Russell), who lives with the old man in the nearby town of Biddlecombe.

Stella is deeply attached to the house where her mother died, but the commander has forbidden her to enter it, though she gets in via Rick, who has become infatuated with her.

The Fitzgeralds feel an inexplicable chill when they unlock an artist’s studio, Rick hears the eerie sobs of an unseen woman at night, and there’s a strange draught on the stairs. Yes, Windward House is haunted! And now it seems that Stella’s mother wants to reveal some terrifying old secrets.

The chilling atmosphere is a great credit to British stage director Allen, making his first movie. Charles Lang was Oscar nominated for his moody Best Black-and-White Cinematography. Victor Young’s music theme ‘Stella by Starlight’ is haunting too and became a popular hit. It is played on piano by Milland (dubbed) and heard as a main theme in the score.

English playwright Dodie Smith (Dear Octopus) and Frank Partos adapt Dorothy Macardle’s novel Uneasy Freehold. Edith Head designs the costumes.

Also in the cast are Barbara Everest as the Irish housekeeper Lizzie Flynn, Alan Napier as Dr Scott, Cornelia Otis Skinner as a lesbian Miss Holloway, Dorothy Stickney, Rita Page, Jessica Newcombe, John Kiernan, David Clyde, Norman Ainsley, Evan Thomas, Queenie Leonard, Leyland Hodgson and Holmes Herbert.

The Uninvited is notable as a pioneering example of a Hollywood film portraying a haunting as a serious supernatural event, whereas before ghosts were usually played for comedy. Paramount belatedly added special effects, after deciding at the last moment to emphasise the film’s supernatural premise, but the effects were removed by the censors in England.

The Criterion Collection released DVD and Blu-ray versions in October 2013 with a new 2K digital film restoration.

Allen’s 1945 follow-up with Russell, The Unseen, is intriguing but didn’t quite repeat the magic.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2279

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