I was shocked to recently learn the G, or “all audiences”, rating has been all but abandoned. It still technically exists, but it is rarely bestowed upon any film nowadays and, when it is, those films are inevitably nature documentaries or fare for the youngest of children. Apparently, PG is now the new G, and I’m sure it won’t be long before studios want even their kiddie entertainment to receive a PG-13. Something about this feels like moving the goalposts.
I won’t say the G rating ever had teeth, since that would have been contrary to its nature. But one can look back at early films which were designated as such and see how much things have changed. 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Andromeda Strain. Dark Star, which was John Carpenter’s very stoner directorial debut. OK, so there was a lot of science fiction. Still, you had deaths in all of those, as well as general themes one would think would be more appropriate for an adult audience.
The most baffling, if not insulting, movie to receive that rating is 1963’s The Haunting. This is not a kid’s movie by any stretch of the imagination. One person I know said they saw it when they were too young, which puts the lie to how it was classified.
Based on Shirley Jackon’s novel The Haunting of Hill House, four people will spend a couple of days in a creepy Victorian mansion built by a man named Hugh Crain. This house has a history of death. Crain’s wife died before even setting eyes on it, her carriage abruptly driving into a tree at the last bend of the drive before she would have seen it. His daughter died in the house after a long life of bitterness, her final moments spent futilely trying to summon her nurse by before pounding on the wall with her walking stick, a thunderous boom echoing through the long, empty hallways.
Although Julie Harris did not know the woman, she is familiar with the sound, as the invalid mother she took care of for years would do the same thing in their house. We get the impression that mother was also deeply unpleasant, pounding on the wall incessantly to summon Harris at all hours. Harris was too exhausted on one fateful night to tend to her mother and, of course, that would be when her mother died. And so Harris blames herself for the death. It is obvious her sister blames her, too. How telling it is, however, that it appears only Harris tended to the old woman. In an additional twist of the knife, the sister inherits the house in which they lived.
The living room of that house is where we first see Harris, as well as that sister, her brother-in-law and her niece. The hostility between Harris and the others is palpable, as the sister refuses to let Harris take the car for the weekend. As Harris struggles to assert, it is half her car and she can use it when she wants. The argument builds until Harris screams at the others to get out. The sister: “Young lady, I’ll have you remember you’re in my living room.” Harris: “And you’re in my bedroom. I pay enough rent for it.” When they leave, Harris snaps off the radio, revealing the mockingly exuberant music playing over this was not the soundtrack.
Harris needs the car so that she can drive to Hill House to be one of the volunteers in a paranormal investigation run by an anthropology professor played by Richard Johnson. The other volunteer is Claire Bloom, somebody of great sensitivity and perception. In a bold choice for a studio film of the era, she is also an obvious lesbian, which we’ll get to more in a bit. Rounding out the group is Russ Tamblyn as the current owner of the property, who has no interest other than eventually selling it.
It is an interesting group and I like the dynamics. Johnson excels as the straight man of the piece, a tweed-jacketed scholar whose decision to pursue academia was in rebellion towards his moneyed ancestors: “I come from one of those respectable English families that dragged all the Victorian virtues into the 20th century.” Harris crushes on him almost immediately, oblivious to the fact he is a married man. Bloom is aware of that, but withholds this from Harris as she doesn’t want to hurt the woman on whom she has a crush. Tamblyn is a smart aleck and cad who is a connoisseur of the finest things physical and a complete non-believer in the supernatural.
Make no mistake: even with a cast with solid, the movie belongs entirely to Harris. It is one of those performances that is a wonder to behold, beginning with the scene where she “steals” the car that is partly hers. She pauses the vehicle as she exits the garage. In voiceover we hear her thoughts: “At last, I am going someplace where I am expected […] and I shall never have to come back.” It feels like this person we just met can finally breathe, and though we barely know her, we are relieved for her. Then that relief turns into an anxiety as she progresses further: “By now, they will know the car is gone, but they don’t know where. They never would have suspected it of me. I would never have suspected it of myself.” I was reminded of Psycho, and Janet Leigh driving alone with the stolen money in her purse. Both are women not yet known to be fugitives, and each is heading towards an end she cannot foresee.
Harris is the first to arrive at Hill House, so she faces the terror alone. She feels the house is looking at her, and she will not be the last to have that feeling. The housekeeper (Rosalie Crutchley) makes the place even less welcoming, coldly informing the guest: “I leave before the dark comes. There won’t be anyone around if you need help. We couldn’t hear you in the night. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark.” And then she smiles, and the sight is guaranteed to make your skin crawl.
Bloom is the next to arrive, and Harris is intensely relieved to see somebody else. Even in the first minute of her time on screen, there is something odd about Bloom’s intense screen presence, though most viewers of the time were likely slow to pick up on her sexuality. She is very high fashion while Harris is quite dowdy. Her character is the singularly named Theodora, which is odd enough, but she goes by the more masculine Theo.
The two guys are the last to arrive. Johnson gives the backstory of the house, and explains how the construction of it intentionally leads to all sorts of unusual happenings. For example, the doors are all hung deliberately off-center, so as be unable to keep open. There is a nice bit of intentional humor when Johnson tries to make one perform on command and it does nothing. Then, when nobody is looking, the door has silently closed. Johnson pats it affectionately as if telling it “good door”.
But the physical structure of the place can’t explain the cold spot everybody feels directly in front of the nursery. It also doesn’t explain the deafeningly poundings on bedroom doors which torment Julie Harris and Claire Bloom on the first night, recalling the final moments in the lives of both Crain’s daughter and Harris’s mother. Neither Johnson nor Tamblyn hear these, as they had conveniently been lured outside the building by what they believe to be a dog. It’s just like a man to doubt a woman, and so these two observe that, for something which banged on the door with such force, there aren’t any marks on it afterwards. Harris responds sarcastically, “How nice it didn’t mar the woodwork.”
As the most sensitive of the group, Harris will be the one most susceptible to the psychological warfare waged by the house. In that scene with the pounding on the bedroom door, she immediately regrets screaming, realizing the house was looking for a room with somebody it in it. Now it knows she’s there. Later, it will demonstrate it knows her name, with it formed in huge letters on a wall, written in “something like chalk”, according to Johnson. Harris believes there is power in names: “It’s my name. It belongs to me and now somebody is using it. It knows my name.”
She will also be disturbed by a face she discerns in the abstract pattern of the bedroom wall at night. That’s the kind of thing I believe is a shared experience from all childhoods. So, once again, I am surprised the MPAA deemed this as suitable viewing for all ages, especially by those upon whom this might have the greatest impact.
The house may be a malevolent force, but this is not your typical haunted house movie. It is no surprise director Robert Wise once worked for Val Lewton, the producer of such movies as Cat People which did wonders with shadows and the power of things unseen. Wise remarks on the commentary track of the blu-ray that he learned more from Lewton than from anybody else. It is telling this movie doesn’t have any objects floating in the air. There definitely won’t be any ghostly forms superimposed over the image. Nobody becomes possessed, though Lois Maxwell, when she finally appears as Johnson’s wife, will completely lose her mind.
The stark black and white photography overall is beautiful without calling attention to itself. The occasional use of a wide angle lens deliberately warps the image so as to emphasize the weirdness of a particular moment. There is even one time such a lens is used in a panning shot—normally something which should never be done, but which emphasizes the wrongness of the scene where this is used.
That photography captures the creepiness of these very convincing sets that are the interior of the place. A motif of cherubs, and close-ups of many of them, emphasizes the feeling of deaths long ago which hang over the film.
Many shots of the exterior are interesting, especially the ones which look like some sort of extreme day-for-night, though these moments are supposedly in broad daylight. I wondered how this was accomplished, and my best guess was some sort of solarization process. From the commentary track, I was surprised to learn this was the work of an infrared camera. I wonder where Wise got the idea to do that.
Let’s circle back to Bloom’s character. I’m sure many viewers today will be displeased with how a non-heteronormative character is portrayed here, but I can’t emphasize enough how bold of a choice this was at the time. If there is one scene I assume will cause outrage today, it is when there is an argument between the women and Harris lashes out at Bloom with words she knows will hurt: “You revolt me. I’d rather be innocent than like you. The world is full of unnatural things. ‘Nature’s mistakes’, they’re called. You, for instance.” In the end, however, there is a moment which is among the most pure and beautiful I have encountered in cinema, Bloom tells Harris, “Oh, Nellie, my Nell, be happy. Please be happy.” That a film of the time would make a character like Bloom’s so gracious and identifiable was unheard of at the time. Also, the script gives her one of the funniest lines in the picture, when Bloom responds to Johnson’s insistence Harris stay in her room: “Well, you’re the doctor!”
I get the impression none of the characters are happy people, but none more so than Harris, who disturbs Johnson by admitting “I sleep on my left side. I read someplace it wears the heart out quicker.” Even Tamblyn seems unsettled, even if he is forever assessing the potential resale value of the various contents in the house. He may even have a use for the disturbing images of torment which illustrate Hugh Crain’s book for the education of his daughter: “I’ve got it! I’ll tear out the pictures and send them to relatives as Christmas cards!” In the end, however, even he, after all his flippant remarks, will be a believer: “The house should be burned down and the ground sown with salt.” Even Johnson, with his rather smug demeanor, will be revealed to be in a loveless marriage when wife Maxwell unexpectedly arrives. Every time I watch this movie, I am surprised to see Ms. Moneypenny from the most Bond pictures in the only thing I have seen her in outside that series.
I love this movie, and one of the many reasons I do is because it approaches the unexplainable menace both on an immediate, emotional level and as a puzzle to be solved through the scientific method. Johnson explains that he isn’t even in the supernatural, per se, but the preternatural. That means something we don’t have a logical explanation for now, but we might somebody. I like the way he puts it, that “the preternatural of one generation become the natural of the next.”
Another of the many reasons I love the movie is because of the mirror elements to it, but in actually imagery and in elements of the plot which rhyme with other parts. Within her first minutes in the house, Harris bends down to pick up her suitcase and sees herself perfectly reflected in the highly polished wood floor of the foyer. I take that to be further confirmation of her feeling the house is looking at her. After all, if she can see herself that clearly in the house, than the house must see Harris as clearly. There will also be imagery that will match that of the overturned carriage which killed Mrs. Crain, but I don’t want to say anything more about that. Similarly, the opening narration by Johnson will be repeated by somebody else at the very end, but I can’t reveal who that is. One thing I will say, however, is a key part of it the first time around is, “Hill House has stood for 90 years, and it might stand for 90 more […] and whatever walked there walked alone” and, at the end, that last part becomes, “…and we who walk here walk alone.”
I don’t have the words to truly do justice to The Haunting, a film that isn’t even done justice by the high praise it still receives. It is beyond me how this picture is not in the pantheon of the very most highly regarded films, such as Citizen Kane and Casablanca, and my essaying is unlikely to boost its public profile any higher. It is a movie of remarkable terror, such as Harris disappearing almost completely from the light, screaming for Bloom to not let the house take her. It is a movie of visual beauty, though the photography is deceptively simple in appearance, making it appear it was effortless to make. It has four truly astounding lead performances. But, if there is one thing, it isn’t, I would say that would be a film for all audiences. Still, it has to be better than what Hugh Crain did in the education of his daughter, with Harris summarizing that as “I can see him now spitting out the words so they take root in her little mind.” There is nothing here disturbing enough to take root in a young mind, exactly, but it packs enough of a punch to make me question that G rating.
Dir: Robert Wise
Starring Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray