Corridor of Mirrors

In Terence Young's first movie, Edana Romney is a society girl whiling her time away while the young man she's going to marry is overseas. She falls in with Eric Portman, who seems terribly rich and terrible arty.... but is obsessed with a 300-year-old painting of a young woman and reincarnation. When he gets around to showing it to Miss Romney, it's the spit and image of her, and he thinks he's the reincarnation of the Borgia she left for another man.

The remainder is part 18th Century Gothic literature, part war-weary spiritualism, and part obsessive behavior that Hitchcock would revisit in VERTIGO. Young directs it as a movie about madness, but it could have easily been tilted in favor of spiritualism, especially given the ornate palace sets, a wild medieval party, and the shafts of light that cinematographer Andre Thomas lays among Serge Pimenoff's Cyclopean sets. It's French realism gone mad, and the film makers knowing it. It's terribly arty, and almost self-congratulatory in its excesses. While it takes itself too seriously for my taste, it will certainly appeal to many people.

This is an eerily effective drama from Terence Young. It all centres around Eric Portman's characterisation of "Mangin". An enigmatic man who arranges to meet the young "Mifanwy" (Edana Romney) who bears a striking resemblance to a woman whose portrait hangs on a wall in his home; a woman he claims to have loved centuries earlier. Could this be possible? What makes this interesting - despite the really quite static acting performances - is the way the story develops. It's quirky. It's darkly menacing - but not in a frightening may, more a sinister and grisly theme that allows us to speculate about what did - or didn't - happen, walking a thin line between history, fantasy and sanity before an ending that left me feeling rather sorry for just about everyone. The photography lends loads to the almost claustrophobic imagery; it's almost as if it were lit by candlelight, with very few fully illuminated scenes. The drawback is the acting, though - neither Portman nor Romney quite delivered as well as I would have liked, and the dialogue is wordy which does drag it down a bit at times. That said, it's a creepy and enjoyable mystery that rarely sees the light of day now, and is certainly worth a watch. Mr. Young's directorial debut, too.

Terence Young made his directorial debut with Corridor of Mirrors, a strange Gothic romantic fantasy drama.

Mifanwy (Edana Romney) a married mother is travelling from Wales to London to meet her lover.

She goes to the Chamber of Horrors in Madame Tussaud's, her lover turns out to be one of the wax exhibits. We go to a flashback when Paul Mangin (Eric Portman) first meets young Mifanwy. Mangin is a man out of his time. Dressed in Edwardian clothes, goes about in a hansom cab and thinks he and Mifanwy were lovers in Renaissance Italy.

Mifanwy is Mangin's ideal fantasy woman, a seducer who has spent centuries looking for his perfect muse. There has been others but he is obsessed with Mifanwy who is the closest to his desires. We see the steps that lead to him being accused of murder.

There is an element of creakiness and archness in the acting that lets the film down. Portman is fine but Romney is the weak link. The production values are very good, the story is a little offbeat but it just does not come together well.

Corridor of Mirrors is directed by Terence Young and adapted to screenplay by Rudolph Cartier and Edna Romney from the novel written by Chris Massie. It stars Eric Portman, Edana Romney, Joan Maude, Barbara Mullen, Alan Wheatley, Hugh Sinclair and Bruce Belfrage. Music is by Georges Auric and cinematography by Andre Thomas.

A woman travels from Wales to Madame Tussauds in London for a rendezvous with her lover. The rest will be told in flashback…

Laughter had a strange effect on him…

Corridor of Mirrors is a hypnotic and nightmarish experience, not in that scared to death kind of way, but in a nightmare where nothing allows you to be comfortable, keeping you in a realm of purgatory, what is real – imagined – or otherwise? The crux of the story concerns a man, Paul Mangin (Portman), who lives in the past and is obsessed with Mifanwy Conway (Romney), who not only looks like the portrait of a lady that hangs in the Mangin palace, but on Mangin's insistence was his lover centuries in the past.

Would you care to continue the adventure?

What follows during the course of the story are subjects ranging from reincarnation, obsessive madness, fetish kinks, seduction, fantasist leanings and murder. To passionate romance, heartfelt regret and soul cleansing. The unusual story, unique maybe? Enjoys toying with audience expectations, even taking famous literary inspirations and fusing them into this Baroque world, with seasoning of the macabre for added spice. As the Mangin/Conway relationship develops, the tension becomes palpable, fear and trepidation vie for control over wistful yearnings. What will win out in the end?

What's behind the curtain?

The look, sound and feel on offer here is quite simply magnificent. This is Gothic noir nirvana. Young and Thomas shoot the film in what I think is an average of 99% shadows and low lights, it's the darkness in daylight effect as shards of light struggle to pierce the gloom through the Venetian blind slats. Candlelight, Scotch mist, moonbeams, canted angles and otherwise all play their atmospheric part, and then there is the backdrop and props…

The Mangin palace is vast in its opulence, complete with the titular corridor of mirrors. Behind each mirror is something that links Mangin's obsession with the past, it is eeriness personified. Mannequins, wax work figures and dolls feature prominently, the Tussauds connection is the Chamber of Horrors, naturally. Spooky harp, spooky housekeeper (again, naturally), and Auric's musical score is a blend of the sinister with poetic whimsy. And the crowning sequence is a Venetian costume ball, a decadent soirée that looks magnificent, but craftily it asks just what is beneath the costume facade of it all?

It's a little too bonkers and creaky in plot development at times, but it knows this and embraces the short comings to keep with the unstable off-kilter vibe. Unfortunately it's a difficult film to track down in good quality home format form, but if you can find a reliable source and you love Gothic noir or Baroque fantasies, then this is for you. 8/10

This is expert, expert film making, rich in atmosphere and mood, and easily as good as the best gothics and psychological 'horror' films of the forties such as Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Seventh Veil, or the Val Lewton works. I don't think there was a single scene that did not hold my attention. I could not begin to enumerate all the little touches and flourishes of lighting, camera angle, dialog, story ideas, etc. but I particularly enjoyed the seamless interweaving of references to Lewis Carroll's Alice (when Edana Romney follows the white cat (white rabbit surrogate) through the labyrhinthine corridors of the mansion, or to Othello/Romeo and Juliet at the Venetian ball, or again to Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. Some compare this film to to Cocteau (it's on the video box), with its ornate and detailed set, as well as its theme, but Corridor of Mirrors for all its fine acting, atmosphere, and mastery of technique is not genius. It is not poetically simple. But if you liked any of the films mentioned above, you will definitely enjoy watching dark, mysterious leading lady Edana Romney (who also co wrote the screenplay) search for the inner resources to free herself from the spell of an incredibly intense and psychologically compelling, but morbid, life.