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Dragonwyck1946 US Dir Joseph L Mankiewicz Cast Gene Tierney, Vincent Price, Walter Huston IMDb |
An intermittently enjoyable sort of patchwork mess, but when it’s good it actually approaches brilliance. Don’t know what to say about the thing as a whole, but the middle third makes for pretty remarkable Gothic romance. What begins almost insufferably good-naturedly turns fitfully darker (and strangely, wittier) throughout till it reaches a crest of compelling creepiness… then goes completely off the deep end in a poorly conceived and oddly paced climax. Mankiewicz is all there as a writer and getting there as a director. It’s just that the film wants to be too many things at once, and everything ends up sticking out sorely — a traditionally Gothic story and setting, lines fit for a screwball script, a dementedly wry twist on things that only half the cast seem to understand… This is a plain oddity that classic film lovers have unaccountably canonized.
Lubitsch was slated to direct before he became ill, and I can’t imagine what he would have done with it… would have made an interesting item in his body of work, certainly.
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