| Haunting, The (1963) |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 112 |
| Public Rating: 9.11 (9 votes) |
Director: Robert Wise |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Horror/Suspense/Thriller |
Year: 1963 |
| Writer(s): Nelson Gidding |
| Distributor: Warner Brothers |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Shirley Jackson’s novel of supernatural horror, The Haunting of Hill House has been adapted twice for film. The second adaptation, released in 1999 under the direction of Jan De Bont (Speed, Twister, Speed 2, was marred by De Bont’s simple-minded reliance on computer-generated graphics to generate scares and shocks. The effects, for the most part, were laughable obvious. Outside of the baroque production design and Lili Taylor’s central performance, the 1999 version of Shirley Jackson’s novel is an object lesson on the perils of relying on visual effects to cover for deficiencies in plot, characters, and characterizations. In comparison, Robert Wise’s adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel, released in 1963, serves as a counterpoint to the excesses of the later film, depending more on cinematography, editing, and performance (and the imagination of the audience) to re-create the psychological horror present in Jackson’s novel.
Wise’s adaptation opens with a helpful voiceover narration, lifted from Jackson’s novel, that recounts Hill House’s macabre history. Built by Hugh Crain, a wealthy businessman, in Vermont for his wife and daughter, Hill House immediately betrays its personality: on their way to her new home, Crain’s wife dies in an accident. Crain remarries, but the second Mrs. Crain has a nasty fall from the main staircase. Abigail, Crain’s only child, remains in the house, becoming a recluse and ultimately dying in her bedroom, alone. Abigail, childless, leaves her Hill House to her female companion and caretaker. But the companion is equally cursed, whether by guilt or the house’s malignant influence on her mind. Wise, in the first of many visual flourishes, mixes third-person and first person point of view shots to insert the audience into the companion’s mind, even as climbs a spiral staircase toward an uncertain end.
With the narration complete, Wise introduces us to the central characters, Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson), an anthropologist curiously interested in proving the existence of the afterlife (and ghosts, of course), Eleanor “Nell” Lance (Julie Harris), a spinsterish woman in her late thirties with psychic abilities, Theodora “Theo” (Clair Bohemian), a Bohemian with ESP (Extra Sensory Perception), and Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn), the future heir of Hill House. Out of this relatively small group of characters, Eleanor is the central character (and not Dr. Markway, whose voice is used for the opening narration), a sexually repressed, emotionally isolated, guilt-ridden (and emotionally unstable) woman. Eleanor, for her part, has escaped an untenable situation: after eleven years of taking care of her ailing mother, she lives uncomfortably with her younger sister and her sister’s family (she sleeps on the couch). Because of her gifts, Dr. Markway has called her to Hill House, to act as a receptor, an amplifier for the supernatural force that lives inside Hill House. As a character, Markway seems to hide behind displays of concern, his solicitude toward Eleanor and the others masking a utilitarian ethos. Via dialogue, appearance, and character interaction, Theo is subtly revealed as a lesbian, with feelings toward Eleanor. Luke Sanderson, the most superfluous of the four characters, functions, more or less, as comic relief, his drunken behavior used to lower or decrease the tension between the characters.
The plotline follows the standard haunted house scenario, with the characters arriving one by one (tellingly, Eleanor arrives first, seeing her refection in the shiny wooden floors), pleasantries exchanges, exposition given, and the first hints of antagonism between and among the characters. The days are used for exploring Hill House’s vast rooms and for relaxation. Hill House, of course, reawakens at night, but its horrors are left unseen. Damp chills stir the air, moans and groans float through the hallways, and a pounding drum-like sound rattles Hill House’s temporary residents, with a supernatural presence threatening to break through and reclaim fresh victims. Threats and conflict exist on three levels, from the house itself, between the characters and their contradictory motivations, and finally, inside the lead character, Eleanor.
Robert Wise and his screenwriter, Nelson Gidding, employ a literary device rarely used in film, using an interior monologue to give “voice” to Eleanor’s thoughts (about her personal failings), desires (for Dr. Markway), and contradictions (leaving or remaining at Hill House). The interior monologue does generate insight into an increasingly unhinged, unsympathetic character, but that insight is one that few audiences will empathize or identify with. In addition, the emphasis on Eleanor's interior monologue can be repetitive at times, undermining dramatic tension and pacing. The interior monologue has another, unintended effect, focusing audience attention on Eleanor's monologue, and distracting us from Julie Harris' performance. There is at least one effective use of Eleanor's monologue, however, with Eleanor in bed, as a cold hand wraps itself around Eleanor's wrist. As the scene unfolds, Wise keeps his camera transfixed on Harris, allowing the audience to closely follow the play of emotions on Harris' face. It is, in short, one of the best scenes of psychological horror put on film.
Critique aside, The Haunting deserves its place in the horror film canon for its gothic production design (especially a menacing, wrought-iron spiral staircase), crisp black-and-white, expressionistic photography, gliding camerawork that reinforces the growing perception that Hill House is itself a central, dominant character in the film, and the subtle use of point-of-view shots across the film, tying Eleanor’s increasingly distressing, subjective experiences inside Hill House (and her conviction that Hill House wants to own her in some metaphysical sense) with that of the companion in the prologue (no other character is privileged with point of view shots). Whether the characters share a similar fate is best left unanswered.
© Mel Valentin, 3rd February, 2005
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