Warning: The following is a literal “review” of Robert Wise’s The Haunting in that it contains spoilers.
“You’re liable to have that shut door in your mind ripped right off it hinges.” –John Markway
Second only to Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Shirley Jackon’s The Haunting of Hill House stands as the greatest story of residential infestation by way of unwelcome paranormal guests during the 20th century. However, Robert Wise’s adaptation of Jackson’s novel, The Haunting, irrefutably usurps Lewis Allen’s cinematic rendition of the James-inspired work, Dorothy Macardle’s novel Uneasy Freehold, The Uninvited. The director of such masterpieces as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and The Body Snatcher presents one of, if not the, greatest haunted house tales ever set to celluloid via Lewtonian understatement, thus proving that the viewer’s mind will indubitably provide the greatest fear imaginable when left to its own devises.
John Markway (Richard Johnson), an anthropologist whose true interest lies within the realm of the supernatural, obtains the right to research the infamous Hill House, a 90 year-old estate, constructed by a misanthrope, replete with a checked past, including a legacy of insanity, murder, and suicide. He brings along with him three “assistants”– Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn), nephew to the owner, playboy, and hardened skeptic whose only interest in the project is the opportunity to evaluate the potential market value of the house; Theo (Claire Bloom), a sexy clairvoyant; and Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris), an unstable, naïve cloistered introvert. The quartet do indeed encounter strange occurrences, the accountability remains frustratingly elusive. Regardless, the longer Markway remains in the house, the more Eleanor’s mental stability ebbs away.
Wise was a protégé of Val Lewton, the producer of Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man, and Cat People. Lewton taught that necessity need not only be the mother of invention, but that it can also serve as the groundwork for rendering a superior product, especially in respect to the genre of horror where psychology is of the utmost importance. Having to guide film after film upon a low RKO budget, the producer came to rely upon shadow and insinuation as opposed to the (expensive) visualization of a monster. It is this aesthetic work ethic which Wise brings to what is perhaps the godfather of understated horror cinema, The Haunted. As such, the genre’s Achilles’ Heel is upended as gratuity is eschewed for conjecture at each and every turn, thereby providing the viewer with ample opportunity for concurrent speculation upon various facets of the film.
The crux of The Haunting’s effectiveness is not that it depicts nary a drop of blood or even the outline of a horrid beast, villain, or apparition, but that the film keeps its audience in an uncomfortable lull throughout in respect to the metaphysical status of the abode. For every initial paranormal activity, a plausible (yet equally unsubstantiated) explicit or implicit rational explanation quickly follows, thereby leaving one’s mental equilibrium as askew as the house’s architecture, the latter of which possibly accounts for doors frequently closing on their own accord. The cold spot which occupies the doorway to the house’s hearth, a nursery (in one of many of Wise’s many black humor moments–a wry commentary upon the root of evil, children), is stated to be victim of a draft. When a cacophonous, deafening banging forces Theo and Eleanor to cling to one another in fear, we are left to contend with why Luke and John–who were outside chasing a phantom canine–never hears the proverbial whimper. Moreover, as the film comes to a close, we are at first lead to believe that, conclusively, the house is haunted after Eleanor crashes her car after she (as well as the viewer) sees a ghost. Yet, Grace Markway (Lois Maxwell), the overseer’s wife, admits it was in fact her attempting to find her way back to the mansion.
Cleverly, for every unanswered question which arises regarding Hill House, an equal number of difficulties are presented with those involved. In respect to the aforementioned scenario involving John’s wife, it is conceivable that Grace orchestrated the girl’s death once she witnessed Eleanor’s infatuation with her husband. Ingeniously, this would permit Grace to enact premeditated murder while no one would be the wiser given that they would freely attribute the circumstance to a haunting considering everyone involved are believers at this time, observer bias and expectation thereby absolving the woman of any guilt. It is with this, Wise’s virtuoso understanding of the psychology of terror, that he succinctly presents his crowning achievement within The Haunting. As stated in Aaron Smuts’s “Haunting the House from Within,” “[Wise’s film] presents a world in which heretics who threaten the film’s premise with disbelief are punished or converted. This serves as a suggestive example to deter any viewer who might be entertaining similar doubts [ . . . ].” Yet, masterfully–and even more subtlety than any of the events which take place during the film–the house is issued POV shots amid the potential logistic alibi that when more than one member of the group experiences something inexplicable, it could merely be a situation involving mass hysteria goaded by Eleanor’s overactive imagination.
It is the central character of Eleanor which the film’s suspense ultimately hinges and Wise, knowing this, exploits it to his greatest ability. Eleanor, an admittedly annoying figure due to her dogged, unfounded persistence amid Hamletian hesitation, simultaneously evokes audience sympathy and repulsion. Her sheltered life has formed a naïve, childlike view of the world where women fall in love with men instantly, morality is black-or-white, and everything is what one believes it to be and nothing more. Thus, the character, having no access to other people outside of her family by which to gain perspective in order to fashion a worldly litmus, is unable to comprehend that her life hereto, replete with the 11-year burden of a dying mother left solely upon her, is not the norm. What results is a scenario where her personality grates upon the viewer as she, via her didactic self-pity, adamantly declares the house wants and needs her. She does so in the subconscious, vain hope of never having to return to her sister’s apartment after being given her first taste of liquor, nail polish, and the company of a man other than her immediate kin. Consequently, we partially thank Wise, for the character’s demise is as tragic as it is a poetic justice.
Interestingly, the film’s only brush with blatancy is when Eleanor tells Theo that she is “Nature’s mistake,” a reference to the latter character’s implied lesbianism. However, not only does the director implement this theme so as to further display the former’s typecast, readymade worldview via staunchly-drawn, obviously conservative, lines of Right and Wrong, he does so during a period when such needed to be more aptly addressed for, indeed, at a juncture in time when the Red Scare, prompted by McCarthyism, was second only to the public’s concern for Keeping Up with the Joneses, anything which was not the norm being innately threatening. Thus, Theo’s sexuality therefore becomes, not only horrific in respect to the status quo, but doubly so in that, having to be all-but-explicitly named, it might otherwise well be moving, functioning, and thriving among us unabated. Cunningly, the filmmaker issues the rub of such occurring with a very attractive individual, thereby convoluting the audience’s innate reactions to the character after the revelation. Wise further comments upon this topic by having Theo, when queried upon what she is afraid of, sadly reply, “What I really want.”
“I haven’t seen a damn thing!” Luke obstinately declares during Robert Wise’s film, a proclamation which reflects the viewer’s instability in a tale that is as admirable for its ability to provoke speculation as it is for succeeding in terrifying its audience without recourse to false alarms, gore, or even an incessant amount of screaming. In a feature shot in black-and-white during a time when color was standardized, only after The Haunting’s closing credits do we come to realize how terrified we have been and continue to be, especially when we pause to consider that the monochrome color scheme is implemented in order to keep distraction to a minimum, thereby proving, yet again, that we are just so much putty in the director’s hands.
-Egregious Gurnow
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