The Woman in White

At least you have to give Warner Bros. credit for trying to film THE WOMAN IN WHITE, taken from the famous Wilkie Collins novel about an evil man (SYDNEY GREENSTREET) and his equally cunning wife (AGNES MOOREHEAD), along with more conventional romantic characters, ELEANOR PARKER (in a dual role), ALEXIS SMITH and GIG YOUNG.

They only partly succeed, due mainly to Greenstreet's histrionic finesse as Count Fosco, seething with villainous intentions and stealing every scene he's in. Eleanor Parker, even though she has a dual role, gives one of her weaker performances as the dull heroine Laura and is only slightly more interesting in the title role. Gig Young is handsome as her suitor but looks a bit uncomfortable in his costume role.

If you like Gothic romance, you'll find plenty to admire here, especially the low-key lighting, the costumes, the quietly menacing music and the overall atmosphere of this period piece. But the resolution differs from the novel and goes for an artificially contrived happy ending.

Trivia note: When the film was released, the poster art showed all the actors in modern costumes to disguise the fact that the story took place in Victorian times. Warner Bros. frequently misled their audiences in this manner, particularly with films like DEVOTION (the Bronte sisters) showing the actresses in modern dress.

A long term plan to get the fabled Fairlie inheritance starts to go awry the second visiting artist and art instructor Gig Young comes to the Fairlie estate in Great Britain. He runs into the Woman In White, a rather strange young lady and then a coach with people in it looking for same. He decides to pretend he knows nothing.

Our heiress Laura Fairlie and the mysterious Woman In White are both played by Eleanor Parker. Almost up to the end I had trouble figuring out exactly what the relationship was between the two Eleanors so I will not say. It's half the fun of watching the film.

There's a pair of villains in the piece Sidney Greenstreet playing Count Fosco, playing him with the same avuncular malice as Casper Guttman. He's a scientist with a title like Baron Von Frankenstein. But rather than experimenting with dead bodies, Fosco prefers to work on the mind with chemicals and intimidation. He's getting a big payoff for arranging the marriage between Parker the heiress and a rapacious no account count John Emery. The only friend the heiress has in the house is companion Alexis Smith.

My favorite in the film is John Abbott who is Parker's father who has the constitution of a napkin and makes Adrian Monk look hale and hearty with all his phobias. Greenstreet and Emery intimidate him rather easily.

Second favorite is Agnes Moorehead who is the countess Fosco and with very little dialog, but much facial expression is the picture of a woman scorned.

This Victorian Gothic drama has one fine cast of scene stealers all working overtime for your enjoyment. The end is unforgettable.

This is one of those exquisitely crafted, though flawed in spots, old movies that you can just lose yourself in. Great sets, costumes, dialogue and photography (excellent atmospheric use of shadows). Sydney Greenstreet, along with Lee J. Cobb probably the finest character actor in the history of film, gives a typically extraordinary performance. He marches through his scenes with that famous bored superiority, and revels in always being the most intelligent person in the room. He makes no secret of his disdain for the transparent notions and motivations of those around him, and delights in always having the last scathing word. Gig Young, as the leading man, is handsome and dashing enough for the role; but he has a funny, crooked way of talking that always makes you feel like he should be playing big city 1950's newspaper reporters. In other words, he's somewhat miscast, but not fatally so. Eleanor Parker plays the title character delicately and memorably - it's hard to understand how such a beautiful and talented actress isn't as well remembered as some others.

It loses steam about 2/3 of the way in and climaxes a little clumsily, but on balance this is an above average effort with much to recommend it.

I'll sheepishly admit to having seen NO version of the apparently VERY popular Willkie novel until seeing the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation on Broadway recently. Came out of the Marquis Theater with a passion to see ALL prior adaptations, and this delectable one is my first. LOVED it! Without doing any "spoilers," let me advise others like me who are seeking this out in the wake of the musical that the musical cut one MAJOR character, that being the Countess Fosco (played here with breathtaking abandon by the fabulous Agnes Moorehead), and despite several story alterations to the musical that I appreciate (it's a bit more emotionally gripping), the Countess might have helped improve the musical. But mostly I'm coming here to make a statement of appreciation for the great Sydney Greenstreet, whose Count Fosco is simply as masterful a portrait of evil as I've ever seen, and a career peak for one of the cinema's greatest character actors. Only problem with the film, whose cast is wonderful in its entirety, is that at its finale, it just sorta trickles away into a forced and artificial-feeling happy ending that I just KNOW couldn't have been in the novel. Otherwise, a swift and engrossing 109 minutes.

One of the quintessential novels of the Victorian era, 'The Woman in White' features sensational aspects that were common to books originally published in weekly installments - in this case, false identities, secrets, crime, and adultery. It also includes the belief in mesmerism, with the evil Count Fosco exerting mind control over many characters, as well as the practice of committing those who were troublesome to one's plans - usually women - to asylums, both of which were real trends in the 19th century. It was highly popular in its day, with a readership approaching 100,000 copies a week.

Unfortunately, the movie adaptation from 1948 is a mixed bag. It stumbles early with the initial meeting of the 'woman in white' by a man on a road at night. Wilkie Collins' friend Charles Dickens considered it to be one of the most dramatic descriptions in literature, but in the film, there is no ethereal shock, and it comes across as a pretty simple meeting. The film captures the dress and language reasonably well though, and there are a couple of excellent performances - Sydney Greenstreet as the mastermind Count Fosco, and John Abbott as Frederick Fairlie, lord of the estate, who is demented, highly eccentric, and fragile. Some of his lines early on to his beleaguered servant Louis are quite funny. I should also say that Eleanor Parker is also fine in her dual role, and Alexis Smith is pretty good as her cousin too - so there are no issues with the cast.

There are two main problems as I see it, and the first is with the story itself, which asks the viewer to swallow a somewhat convoluted plot with some pretty big coincidences. What worked in installment form, or even in the published novel in 1860, is hard to translate successfully to film. The second issue is in cinematography, and overall tone. While it has a few nice moments, it's just not striking or tense enough, starting with that scene on the road at night, and continuing on through the movie. The result is that you've got a story teetering on the edge of being creaky, filmed in a way that pushes it over that edge. Watch it for the performances, or if you're a fan of the novel and want to see an old film version, maybe to compare it to the 2018 BBC mini-series version.