Friday | August 19, 2011 9:15 pm

Dragonwyck

Screening on Film

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
With Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Vincent Price.
US, 1946, 35mm, color, 103 min.
Print source: Sikelia Productions

Rarely screened today, Mankiewicz's directorial debut is a dark romantic fantasy about a spirited young 19th-century farm girl whose life is changed by an invitation to live with her mysterious cousin, one of the last of the baronial landholders bitterly resented by the exploited local farmers. An important entry in the Forties cycle of feminist Gothic films inaugurated by Rebecca, Mankiewicz's moody cult classic offered seminal, early roles for both Gene Tierney as a winsome ingénue and Vincent Price as an ambivalently villainous charmer. Dragonwyck reveals Mankiewicz's enduring fascination with the past as a dangerous fantasy realm that ultimately destroys those who linger within it. – HG