It was a big day when Vincent Price called on plain Connecticut Yankee farm couple Walter Huston and Anne Revere and asked that one of their two daughters to live on his vast Hudson Valley estate called Dragonwyck. Gene Tierney was the one who wanted it more and she got it. Little did she realize she was going to a real Gothic horror show.
Curiously enough I happened to see the British film The Man In Grey a few days earlier and the action there takes place around 20 to 30 years earlier than this film, set firmly in the Jacksonian era of popular democracy. James Mason in The Man In Grey and Vincent Price in Dragonwyck are both aristocrats to the manor born. Both are living in eras of change in their countries and both refuse to accept it. But Mason's grip on reality in general is a lot firmer than Price's.
Tierney is ostensibly to be a companion for Mrs. Price played by Vivienne Osborne. Later when Osborne dies, Tierney weds Price and soon she's pregnant enough in order that the family name be kept on. That's Price's goal, it's all he ever really wanted out of Tierney, just like James Mason wanted from Phyllis Calvert in The Man In Grey. When the baby dies shortly after birth though, that's when Price really loses it.
The book by Anne Seton was quite a bit more complex and the script is rather awkwardly put together. Spring Byington plays a mysterious housekeeper who stays mysterious as she leaves the film abruptly. Price has a young daughter in Connie Marshall who's just there and then gone. It's possible there was more to their parts that got left on the cutting room floor.
Two interesting roles are those of Jessica Tandy as an Irish maid who has a club foot who Price mocks at every opportunity and Harry Morgan, a yeoman Dutch farmer who is the voice of a rising Jacksonian democracy. The patroon system which bound farmers to the land and landlords like Price that came from Dutch colonial days was finally done away with in new rent laws. It's a change that Price just doesn't recognize.
The general mood of Gothic horror is captured well in Dragonwyck. I wish the story had been better told however.
Curiously enough I happened to see the British film The Man In Grey a few days earlier and the action there takes place around 20 to 30 years earlier than this film, set firmly in the Jacksonian era of popular democracy. James Mason in The Man In Grey and Vincent Price in Dragonwyck are both aristocrats to the manor born. Both are living in eras of change in their countries and both refuse to accept it. But Mason's grip on reality in general is a lot firmer than Price's.
Tierney is ostensibly to be a companion for Mrs. Price played by Vivienne Osborne. Later when Osborne dies, Tierney weds Price and soon she's pregnant enough in order that the family name be kept on. That's Price's goal, it's all he ever really wanted out of Tierney, just like James Mason wanted from Phyllis Calvert in The Man In Grey. When the baby dies shortly after birth though, that's when Price really loses it.
The book by Anne Seton was quite a bit more complex and the script is rather awkwardly put together. Spring Byington plays a mysterious housekeeper who stays mysterious as she leaves the film abruptly. Price has a young daughter in Connie Marshall who's just there and then gone. It's possible there was more to their parts that got left on the cutting room floor.
Two interesting roles are those of Jessica Tandy as an Irish maid who has a club foot who Price mocks at every opportunity and Harry Morgan, a yeoman Dutch farmer who is the voice of a rising Jacksonian democracy. The patroon system which bound farmers to the land and landlords like Price that came from Dutch colonial days was finally done away with in new rent laws. It's a change that Price just doesn't recognize.
The general mood of Gothic horror is captured well in Dragonwyck. I wish the story had been better told however.