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Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2023 20:01:15 GMT
"This is cousin Phoebe, of whom I wrote."
"Hepzibah, I want to look at you."
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Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2023 20:03:20 GMT
"We can take a picture now in less than four minutes."
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 1, 2023 20:10:46 GMT
"Yes, yes, very amusing" Sanders is dying, he so wants the gold.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2023 20:11:15 GMT
The struggle is over the house...but neither one of them legally owns it.
Hepzibah does.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2023 20:17:32 GMT
Jaffrey: "Everyone's disturbed. We live in disturbing times."
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Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2023 20:21:52 GMT
Some contemporary critics complained about the makeup used for aging. I guess they wanted Hepzibah to have wrinkles and maybe a few gray streaks in her hair.
But if Clifford was imprisoned when they were in their 20s, she would only be 40-something upon his release. Hardly old.
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 1, 2023 20:23:38 GMT
Cousin Phoebe pops her head in after the gun shot, "Odd, it looks like everyone is still alive," she thinks.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2023 20:24:16 GMT
Suicide in the hall. The jig is up, Jaffrey.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2023 20:25:07 GMT
Now who's the murderer!
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 1, 2023 20:27:27 GMT
Excellent start to the Gothic melodrama month.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2023 20:28:38 GMT
Two different posters for the movie...
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Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2023 20:29:48 GMT
This one plays up the romance:
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Post by Andrea Doria on Oct 1, 2023 20:32:20 GMT
LOL at Both of you!
I was so relieved to see the double wedding. I thought those men were a group of doctors ready to take someone, anyone to the asylum.
Twas high blood pressure and greed once again!
Thanks, Topbilled! This was riveting!
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Post by Fading Fast on Oct 2, 2023 2:24:58 GMT
The House of the Seven Gables from 1940 with Margaret Lindsay, Vincent Price, George Sanders, Dick Forman, Cecil Kellaway and Nan Grey
A good story is always an auspicious start for a movie. Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The House of the Seven Gables provides that good story. Of course, being Hollywood, it changed parts of Hawthorne's tale, but kept enough of it to end up with an enjoyable movie.
A curse hangs over the House of The Seven Gables from a feud going back to the 17th-century days of the Salem Witch Trials. Now in the 19th century, two brothers fight over the house, leading to one intentionally falsely accusing the other of murdering their father.
Believing that there are valuable documents buried in the walls of the house and that the house will now be his alone, the bad brother swears evidence against the accused brother leading to the accused brother being convicted of murder and sentenced to life.
In a neat twist, all revealed very early in, a distant cousin, a young pretty girl, who was engaged to the brother sent to prison, is left the house. This leaves the bad brother without access to the house he believes contains riches.
Fast forward twenty or so years and the house is in disrepair, the pretty cousin has become a bitter and haggard spinster who, to her credit, never stopped fighting for her fiance's freedom.
Her fiance's sentence is finally commuted, but he returns home a man bent on revenge. The climax, no spoilers coming, has the much-needed final face-off between the two brothers taking place, of course, in the cursed house.
It's a darn-good gothic melodrama with a bit too-much Hollywood schmalz mixed in, but strong acting and a short-run time make it an entertaining picture even if Hawthorne might be a bit miffed at what they did to his story.
In one of her best career roles, the pretty and diction-perfect Margaret Lindsay plays the wonderfully and Biblically named Hepzibah, the young woman who inherits the house. Her transition from happy girl in love to cold and ascetic spinster is poignant.
George Sanders plays his typical character as the urbane nasty schemer willing to do almost anything for riches, while sounding highly educated. Price, alway at home in a gothic setting, is good as the kinder but one-off-the-beat brother.
Dick Forman, in one of his career best roles (that's two in one movie), is excellent as the upbeat but theoretical embodiment of the old curse, who serves mainly as a symbol and change agent. Finally, Nan Gray is pretty to look at in her small cousin-of-Hepzibah role.
Created just for the 1940 movie is a side story about the good guys supporting the abolitionist movement, while greedy Sanders tries to profit on the slave trade. With only modest tweaking, even today's unforgiving morality flyspeckers would probably approve.
While it's a gothic tale with curses and spirits, the movie's atmosphere is far less-haunting and eerie than one expects, especially, of a Hawthorne-penned tale. Instead, most of the movie has a simple, non-threatening "generic old New England" feel.
The House of the Seven Gables is good because its talented cast easily pulls off, altered as it is, Hawthorne's powerful story of Biblical-level brotherly hate, a century-plus-long curse, Romantic Era love and, even, a hint of a treasure hunt.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Oct 2, 2023 17:38:53 GMT
Thanks for another fine review, Fading Fast!
This one was great fun, I'm still laughing at Topbilled,s "Now who's the murderer!"
It's got me in a George Sanders appreciation mood. He did such a good job of being despicable in movies like this, I was starting to truly hate him, but according to his wikipedia he was well loved by many and as witty as the characters he played.
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