THE UNINVITED
US, 1944, 100 minutes, Black and white.
Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Cornelia Otis Skinner.
Directed by Lewis Allen.
The Uninvited was a particularly successful and entertaining ghost story of the 1940s. It is in the vein of Daphne du Maurier Cornwell stories.
Ray Milland (who was to win the Oscar the following year for his performance as an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend) and Ruth Hussey are brother and sister who find a house on the Cornish coast which they want to buy. Donald Crisp (Oscar for How Green Was My Valley, 1941) plays the owner of the house. The cast also includes the writer Cornelia Otis Skinner in one of her rare appearances on screen as well as the tragic Gale Russell.
The film has the atmosphere of England – and then moves into the area of suggestions of ghosts, supernatural activities, haunted houses. The film is very effective in its way – and received an Oscar nomination for its black and white photography.
1. Was this a good thriller? As a thriller of the 40s? Now? Different impacts in different decades?
2. How enjoyable are ghost stories? How credible are they for audiences? What is their appeal: fears, superstition, fantasy, enjoyment? How did this film measure up?
3. How did the film create its atmosphere? How well? The English atmosphere? the village, the house, the candles and darkness, the suggestions of cold? Dramatic appearances?
4. Were the characters important or were they merely conventional and fictional characters subservient to the plot and atmosphere? Was their sound insight into character in Fitzgerald, his sister?
5. Colonel Badge? Was he developed as a character? His reasons for selling the house, his background knowledge to the haunting, his love for his granddaughter? his knowledge of the truth? The irony of his death? How well developed was his character in comparison with the others?
6. How attractive was the girl? The mystery of her background, the mysteriousness of her personality, her fascination for the home, the reunion with Fitz Gerald, her strengths yet her being possessed and being struggled for by the ghost? How credible was this? How did it engage audience attention and emotion?
7. Did the audience expect the ghosts to be taken as real? Did they expect a trick? The fact that the ghosts were not a trick in this story? How were the presences of the ghosts communicated, a sense of presence, smells, coldness, a sense of evil, noises, the dog and cat unwilling to go up the stairs, cries in the night? The mystery of the ghosts? How fascinating was this? The gradual revelations of the true identities and the meaning of the incidents? Was the cliff in any way menacing?
8. The importance of Miss Holloway as companion, as a menace to the girl, as knowing the truth? The holding the girl in the home?
9. How conventional was the role of the doctor? His discovery of the truth in the books? Did this seem too contrived or was it appropriate for the film?
10. How good an exmple of the ghost genre was this fila?
