Monday | August 22, 2011 7:00 pm

House of Strangers

Screening on Film

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
With Edward G. Robinson, Susan Hayward, Richard Conte.
US, 1949, 35mm, black & white, 101 min.
Print source: 20th Century Fox

Among Mankiewicz's darkest films, House of Strangers is an intense family drama that traces the tragic consequences of a stubborn patriarch's dramatic fall from grace. Mankiewicz's obsession with the past is poignantly captured in the lyrical Wellesian flashback that structures the film and in the figure of Edward G. Robinson's immigrant Italian banker whose blind faith in hopelessly antiquated Old World traditions and assumptions of filial piety sows seeds of bitter resentment amongst his children. Burning with a dark fervor as the vengeful son, Richard Conte delivers one of his great early leading performances, buoyed by Phillip Yordan's clipped and baroque dialogue and Susan Hayward's radiant presence as a street-smart socialite. – HG