House by the River (1950)

A deranged writer murders a maid after she resists his advances. The writer engages his brother's help in hiding the body, and then watches as the brother becomes the prime suspect.

Director:

Fritz Lang

Writers:

Mel Dinelli (screenplay), A.P. Herbert (novel)

Stars:

Louis Hayward, Lee Bowman, Jane Wyatt

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Louis Hayward	...	Stephen Byrne
Lee Bowman	...	John Byrne
Jane Wyatt	...	Marjorie Byrne
Dorothy Patrick	...	Emily Gaunt
Ann Shoemaker	...	Mrs. Ambrose
Jody Gilbert	...	Flora Bantam
Peter Brocco	...	Harry - Coroner
Howland Chamberlain	...	District Attorney
Margaret Seddon	...	Mrs. Whittaker - Party Guest
Sarah Padden	...	Mrs. Beach
Kathleen Freeman	...	Effie Ferguson - Party Guest
Will Wright	...	Inspector Sarten
Leslie Kimmell	...	Mr. Gaunt
Effie Laird	...	Mrs. Gaunt

Storyline

The unsuccessful writer Stephen Byrne tries to force his servant Emily Gaunt sexually while his wife Marjorie Byrne is visiting a friend and accidentally strangles her. His crippled brother John Byrne coincidently comes to his house in that moment, and Stephen asks him to help to get rid of the corpse and avoid an scandal, since his wife would be pregnant. The naive and good John helps his brother to dump the body in the river nearby his house. Stephen uses the disappearance of Emily to blame her and promote his book. When the body is found by the police, all the evidences points to John, and he becomes the prime suspect of the murder.

---

Plot Keywords:

cigarette smoking | bathtub | looking at self in mirror | shadow | aggression | 

---

Taglines:

WOMEN SPOKE OF HER with Scorn...MEN THOUGHT OF HER with Longing!

---

Genres:

Crime | Drama | Film-Noir | Thriller

---

Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

25 March 1950 (USA)

Also Known As:

Floodtide

Filming Locations:

Republic Studios, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Fidelity Pictures Corporation

Technical Specs

Runtime:

83 min (Turner library print)

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Lee Bowman's character has a limp, but other than being called a cripple, it's never explained.

---

Quotes

John Byrne: Stephen... I can't go through with this.
Stephen Byrne: You promised to stay up there.
John Byrne: Listen to me. The only thing to do is go to the police. Tell then exactly how it happened. It was an accident.
Stephen Byrne: But, they'll never believe me. Even you don't believe me!

User Reviews

Cold-blooded and callous murder and a flawed cover-up

House by the River (1950)

A straight up Gothic murder scenario with echoes of the 1945 "Spiral Staircase." A family with two brothers at odds with each other is living in a house and one of them is a murderer. And at first only the audience knows who. Their relative isolation on the banks of a wide river means only that they will have little help when danger occurs. The neighbors and police and few and far.

Louis Hayward plays the main character, Stephen Byrne, a writer and a bit of a self-important cad. Hayward has an odd style on film during this era, attractive and likable at first, but with an acerbic humor and some kind of unworkable stiffness, as if you know he's always performing. But he's clever about it, and when you realize he isn't meant to be exactly lovable, he's pretty well cast. Byrne's brother, wife, and maid all come through with solid if uninspired performances, and you wonder exactly what held everyone back. Fritz Lang has many more successful melodramas than this one.

I think the weakness is largely the raw material, the story itself, which is a bit straight forward. One brother commits a murder, the other is drawn into helping cover it up, and then the tensions build between them as an inquest raises questions. It has moments, but there are no further twists that work. The ending is out of character, almost comical in its false (and unlikely) horror.

Along the way, though, are a series of nice scenes, inside the house at night, along the river at night, at a party meant to hide the killer's guilt, and so on. The music is especially helpful in jabbing the audience at key moments. American Georges Antheil was a composer famous for his avant-garde pieces in the 1920s in Europe before settling into a Hollywood routine. You can detect, and appreciate, the edge he brings to the score. The photography by contrast is good without rising up to the possibilities of these kinds of settings--the house, the river, the dock, all have more dramatic potential that we just don't see.