Abstract
This study uses various critical approaches to analyze James Whale's 1932 film, The Old Dark House, and to some extent, the J. B. Priestley novel, Benighted, upon which it is based. The greatest difference between the two works is in their endings-the character Penderel dies in the novel but survives in the film version. The film also emphasizes the plot more than the characters, cutting much of the novel's character-developing monologues. This sacrifices, as well, much of Priestley's social commentary. The film nevertheless has more depth to its characters than many plot-oriented films of the period. The Old Dark House fits into the horror genre, and it is pervaded by the common generic themes of danger and fear. Other ideas, such as isolation and alienation are also treated, however, expressed primarily through the character development in both the novel and the film. A major theme is the idea of confinement as a means of escaping danger, reversed at the end when characters leave the confines of the old house. The film contains numerous possibilities for symbolic interpretation using mythic-archetypal and Freudian concepts, but much of this is open to speculation. The film also has possible homosexual overtones in the characters vi of the house's residents, although this may or may not have been intentional. Technically, The Old Dark House is an average film which uses standard functional devices to tell the dramatic story, but it does contain a few effective shots and scenes. Rather slow-starting, it builds to an effective crisis and climax, and improves upon the novel in its handling of dramatic tension. It uses no musical accompaniment on the soundtrack and relies heavily on dialogue throughout much of its length. When it is compared with other films of its genre from the same period, The Old Dark House is found to contain strong photography and competent editing. Parallel elements-specifically the use of an old, dark house, an insane antagonist, and a mute servant-show up in several other films made the same year as The Old Dark House. Whale's sense of humor-strange, very dry, and often elusive-is present throughout the film. The Old Dark House represents a turning point in the type of humor Whale used in his films of the horror genre. The humor of The Old Dark House, in combination with its character development and possibilities for symbolic interpretation rank it among the best horror/thriller films of the 1930s, and one of James Whale's best picturessecond only to The Bride of Frankenstein. fight violently until Philip is able to knock Morgan unconscious with the large oil lamp. Out in the stable, Penderel and Gladys have a heart to heart discussion over their drinks and affirm their new-found love. When they return to the house they find only Sir William in the main room. Upstairs, Philip and Margaret enter the bedroom of old Sir Roderick Femm. He fills them in somewhat on the family history, revealing who the mysterious person is of whom Horace is so afraid. He explains that another family member, Saul, is a mad pyromaniac who wants to turn the house into a burnt offering, and he is kept locked up on the top floor. For some reason Morgan is the only person who can control him, but if he gets drunk he might decide to release Saul. When Sir Roderick mentions this, Philip quickly checks the stairs to make sure Morgan is still unconscious, but dis covers that Morgan is gone. Horace comes out of his room and tells Philip to go on a deeper level it is a re minder of the deluge which destroyed virtually all human life in numerous mythologies, reinforcing the threat of death inherent in the genre. The storm does not worry Rebecca, however, who reassures everyone that the "house is built on rock"--another Biblical allusion, implying that it was built by a wise man and that it will not be swept away by the water. If it is true that the Femm who constructed the house was a wise man, this allusion serves to emphasize the extent of the family Femm's current state of degredation--again drawing to mind the association with the house of Usher and with it no reassurance that the house of Femm will not fall. The house pervades the film and is presented in three main ways: first as a place of refuge from the elements, then immediately as a place of mystery, and soon as a place of fear and danger. The word "house" has often been used as a synonym for "brothel," and the idea of a "house of ill repute" is reinforced when Rebecca alludes to wild orgies of earlier times during her lecture to Margaret. The old house is more than literally dark--it holds the darker side of humanity, benighted rejects from society. The Femms are decrepit outcasts-a criminal, a madman, an invalid, and a fanatic. Their servant is an alcoholic brute. All are confined to the house as in a private worldthe storm while they are confined in side the car. Soon they reach the house and inside it are safe from landslides as well as the wind and rain. Even within the house itself confinement is associated with safety. Saul has been locked away in the attic to keep the household safe. Horace's fears cause him to confine him self in his room when Philip gets the oil lamp. Later, when Morgan is drunk and Saul is loose, Rebecca retreats to her room. The Wavertons lock Sir Roderick in his room for his own protection, and Penderel hides the women in a closet which he locks. The men force Morgan back into the kitchen to confine him in order that the others will be safe. The safety of confinement is reversed, however, when Penderel finds himself locked in the main hall with the psychotic Saul. The locked doors prevent his escape and make it impossible for him to summon help. The confine ment of the women in the closet, too, although it protects them from Saul and Morgan, keeps them from seeing what is going on--keeping them "in the dark," as it were. Their screams to be let out to see what has happened between Penderel and Saul attract Morgan. He unlocks the closet door and the women are immediately cornered. Relief comes when the hall door is finally battered in by the rest of the men, literally and figuratively shattering the claus trophobia of the scene. With the dawn comes the freedom to leave the house in light and safety, and it is the outside world that provides relief-and escape from confinement. More traditional mythic elements also can be found in The Old Dark House. A suggestion of the Eden myth is present, with the guests playing their role in the pattern by gradually gaining the knowledge of the good of each other and the evil secret of the house and family history of brings in a variation on the archetypal motif of the sacrificial scapegoat when Penderel dies, alone battling Saul to save the others. Had Saul been successful in setting fire to the house, Penderel would have been a part of his burnt offering and the atonement for "the sins of the fathers" Rebecca is so preoccupied with. Additionally, Penderel's self-examination and charac ter transformation immediately before his death in the novel fit into a rite of passage pattern. Penderel is the only person in the story whose character shows any kind of major change or growth. The experience of the war and his dis appointment at love were responsible for the disillusioned cynicism with which he begins the story. The acceptance of his affection by Gladys and the crisis provided by Sauleveryone but herself is. The ego is per sonified in the five travelers, especially Philip and Mar garet, who try to maintain some sort of balance between the extremes. Philip tries to remain calm throughout, but can become violent when necessary to protect his wife. Margar et is a respectable wife, but she enjoys her womanhood and is repulsed by Rebecca's self-important celibacy. Rebecca makes a strong enough impression, however, that Margaret is haunted by her--much as the ego is torn at times between the id and the superego. This inner conflict is shown beautifully in the film after Rebecca leaves Margaret to finish changing her clothes. Margaret looks into a cracked mirror which distorts her own face and then seems to show her Rebecca's face repeating part of her sermon. Several twisted close-ups of Rebecca follow in rapid succession, interrupted once by a very brief shot of Morgan-the surfacing of the id in response to an over dominant superego, and a sinister foreshadowing of the danger that is to come later. This scene also shows Mar garet opening a window to relieve some of the oppressive atmosphere Rebecca has left, but like a Pandora opening her box, all she lets in is the raging storm, blowing wind and rain into the room-later the cause of her being left alone in the main hall where Morgan confronts her. A less dangerous personification of the id is Gladys, a symbol of the new generation of freer sexual morals. She takes responsibility for her own body and wants to live with Penderel, not mentioning marriage as either a prerequi site or an eventual goal. Penderel, for the most part much more worldly and fancy-free, plays the part of the ego with her and proposes marriage, an important step in his charac ter transformation (and one of the few obvious ones main hall. The big climax of the film is the fight between Saul and Penderel as the flames rage, yet the fire somehow manages to burn itself out with no out side help before it can destroy the house. script and its visual artistry, The Old Dark House contains multiple levels of meaning, brought out in this chapter, which place it above the many quickly made, low-budget horror films that were produced as Whale's later The Bride of Frankenstein but it shows improvement from his earlier work, Frankenstein. There is far more camera movement in The Old Dark House than in Frankenstein and, even more importantly, fewer awk ward pauses between lines. The cast of Frankenstein was uneven whereas everyone who appears in The Old Dark House gives a credible performance which holds up better today than most of the acting in Frankenstein. Camera takes are generally shorter in The Old Dark House and the editing in general is tighter. Short closeups of Morgan at several points in the film alternate with long shots rather than medium shots for an effective un settling effect. A relatively long seven to eight-second shot in the fight between Philip and Morgan is made more interesting with a pan to follow the action, and all the shots surrounding it are much shorter-half its length or less. Several long takes are used to advantage by employ ing a dolly and allowing the camera to move into the scene. House. The severity of the rainstorm is em phasized by closeups of water trickling off the back of Waverton's hat onto his neck, the drenched roadmap with water-smeared ink, and the tires spinning in the mudstaging of the actors and editing provide additional memorable moments. The cross-cutting in the film is used effectively to build tension toward toward its con clusion, as pointed out in the discussion of structure in chapter 3. A shot of the drunken Morgan through a window as Gladys moves past on her way to the stable is suddenly made exciting when Morgan lunges toward the window (and the camera) and thrusts his hand through the glass, groping for Gladys. Later, as Mrs. Waverton looks out the door into the rain for Penderel and Gladys, a hand appears above her head and all at once slams the door in front of her. Then Morgan is revealed looming over her. Still later, when Saul is first shown, only his hand on the bannister can be seen at first. Also, the first clue to the audience that Saul is truly insane is shown visually. After he has con vinced Penderel that he is rational and being held prisoner, Penderel looks away to try the bolted door. While Penderel is at the door, the shot cuts to a tight close-up of Saul as his face twists into a strange expression and he utters a soft maniacal chuckle. As soon as Penderel looks back Dark House, as in his earlier Frankenstein, Whale uses only dialogue and sound effects on the film'night, and also uses insanity as an important element of the plot. There is an eccentric and rather om inous housekeeper named Mammy Pleasant who is to some extent a counterpart to Horace and Rebecca Femm. Since Priestley's novel came out in 1927, he may or may not have seen or read the 1922 stage play of The Cat and the Canary before he wrote his book, but there is a strong chance that Whale (or at least his photographer, Arthur Edeson) saw the film version before making The Old Dark House. One shot in particular has a direct counterpart in the earlier film: curtains billowing in a darkened hallway. The Cat and the Canary is the best-remembered silent film exploiting a darkened house for thrills, but was by no means the only one. Even a relatively light comedy of manners like too, has an insane antagonist, but his identity is not revealed until the end, as had been the case in Old Dark House uses no music during the film. Whale uses a great deal of dialogue at the beginning of his film, to set the mood as well as to establish the characters (the very first word of the film is an exasperated, "Hell!" spoken by Philip). Later he uses periods of silence to develop and heighten the mood: notably in two solo one or more stock comic characters borrowed from theatrical tradition. The bumbling fool was probably the most common (e.g., Snitz Edwards in The Phantom of the Opera and Creighton Hale in The Cat and the Canary)mood that balances the suspense and terror. There is often a fine line between such humor and the uninten-tional "camp" humor which derives from dated acting styles. When the actors themselves appear to relish their roles, as they do in The Most Dangerous Game and The Old Dark House and especially The Bride of Frankenstein, the humor found by modern audiences was more than likely intended. This type of humor is sometimes easy to miss on first viewing of a film if the viewer is caught up in the melodrama of the story and anxious to see how it will be resolved, par ticularly if the viewer is accustomed to and makes allow ances for earlier acting and produciton techniques. On subsequent viewings, the ending is already known and more attention can be paid to aspects of the film stated, "Nothing amuses me so much as understatement./' (Truffaut, p. 170). Whale's films reflect a similar philosophy with macabre subject material-Dark House he stands out among the five travelers as perhaps the closest to a protagonist beef," to which she responds, "Tend it yourself,being a comic stereotype with her selective deafness and self-important fanaticism. She shrieks out, "No beds--they can't have beds!" And when Margaret asks if she may change her wet clothes she says, "You look wet. when he greets the travelers for the first time and they illustrate Whale's weird sense of what that it contains certain elements which show up in several other pictures made the same year-specifically the use of an old, dark house, an insane antag onist, and a mute servant. Definitions of the horror film set forth in the introduction all apply to The Old Dark House, placing it in the horror genre. The thriller film by definition provides its audience with thrills, by means of suspense and/or surprise. Generally the audience is given certain information not known by the characters, adding to the tension, but in The Old Dark House the view ers see only what the five visitors to the house see, and at the same time. This keeps the audience as uncertain about what will happen as are the travelers. Thrills are provided by such devices as the surprise close-ups used to introduce the forboding Morgan, distorted visions of the weird Rebecca Femm in a broken mirror, and the unexpected rush of wind and rain into the room when a window blows open. The only time true suspense is used is the moment when Saul twists his face into a maniacal grin when Penderel's back is turned, informing the audience of Saul's madness shortly before Penderel realizes it. Most of the film is more concerned with mystery-the strange and unclear pasts of the permanent residents of the house, and what effect they will have on the unwelcome guests. Unlike a conventional mystery, however, such as a detective story, the characters do not learn facts before the audience, and indeed fact-gathering is not the primary focus in The Old Dark House. The mystery is simply another aspect of the plot, and much of it is never fully explained as it inevi tably is at the end of every detective story. The mystery is a part of the gothic mood that is so often characteris tic of the horror film genre. he would incorporate more of a balance between the two types of comedy. The Old Dark House, then,
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