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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0738329041922
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Label: Kino Video
Manufacturer: Kino Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Kino Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: November 22, 2005
Running Time: 85 minutes
Sales Rank: 78876
Studio: Kino Video
Theatrical Release Date: March 25, 1950
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Virtually unseeable for half a century, House by the River, the rarest of Fritz Lang's American films, proves to be an atmospheric serving of Southern Gothic with style and perversity to burn. This is a happy surprise, given that the film was made at a low point in Lang's career, at a Poverty Row studio, with a low-wattage cast. Louis Hayward--whose dark, spoiled good looks and insinuating smile suggest Orson Welles' tawdry evil twin--plays an effete author in a small 19th-century town. One hot, lazy afternoon he's tempted (in a brilliantly directed scene) by thoughts of the comely maid soaking in his upstairs bathroom. There follows an awkward pass, a hand over her mouth, and suddenly he finds himself an accidental murderer. With a dead body to get rid of, living by a river comes in handy. But on this river, secrets have a way of returning with the tide.
The script by Mel Dinelli (who had just written the trim 1949 thriller The Window) ably milks the suspense, and there's a creepy moonlit search by rowboat for the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't corpse. The failed novelist, beginning to relish his guilt, acquires fresh inspiration as a writer and also becomes a cagy manipulator of other people, notably the wife (Jane Wyatt) who doesn't know what he's done, and the crippled brother (Lee Bowman) who does. Making a virtue of production resources only slightly upscale of Edgar G. Ulmer, Lang turns the titular domicile into an Expressionist hothouse where lace curtains yield a web of shadows, potted plants throw jagged black spears across high-key faces, and the breeze from the river is anything but fresh. Mastered from British archival materials, the DVD gleams like a cutlery-store window. --Richard T. Jameson
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This shows what a great director like Fritz Lang can do with peanuts. Laughton must have seen this for his "Night of the Hunter", some of the feel is so similar. "Hunter" is superior because the script and cast are, but Jane Wyatt is one of the most underrated talents ever in films, in part because of the Red Scare blacklist of which she was a victim. The other leads are good but the film suffers from mediocre talent in the supporting roles. All the same, this is the kind of film Manny Farber used ... Read More
Rating:  -
The way I understand it, after some commercial failures and word getting around Hollywood that he was difficult to work with, Fritz Lang (Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, Metropolis, M) found employment at the poverty row studios directing such features as this one titled House by the River (1950), which was released by Republic Productions. Based on a novel by British author A.P. Herbert, and adapted for the screen by Mel Dinelli (The Spiral Staircase), the film stars Louis Hayward (The Man in the Iron Mask), ... Read More
Rating: -
Louis Hayward stars as erratic and unbalanced writer Stephen Byrne in Fritz Lang's despondent film noir drama, "House By the River". The privileged Hayward accidently kills his wife's attractive housemaid after she rejected his unwanted amorous advances. With fear of exposure he wheedles the help of his staid and ethical brother John played by Lee Bowman, to help him dispose of the body. They put the corpse in a sack then submerge it in the nearby river. Curiously the notoriety of the maid Emily's apparent ... Read More
Rating: -
If nothing else, House By The River establishes that a first-rate director can still make an interesting but second-rate film. There are so many elements of style and technique in this movie that make it worth watching, yet there's not much you're left with afterwards.
Sometime before the turn of the century, Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) and his wife, Marjorie (Jane Wyatt), live in a comfortable house next to a river in a small town. Byrne thinks of himself as a writer, but everything he writes is ... Read More
Rating: -
This is a thrilling crime drama made in 1949, and is one of the many films directed by Fritz Lang who was one of Germany's foremost filmmakers in the silent 1920s era before going to the US in the early 30s. In Lang's very capable and experienced hands, this low budget melodrama becomes quite a high-class drama with convincing characters and psychological suspense which is still exciting and entertaining viewing over half a century later. Lang's use of strong light and shadow contrasts add intensity and mood to ... Read More
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