Guest in the House (1944) aka Satan in Skirts
CONTAINS SPOILERS
I have never understood the appeal of Anne Baxter. Her acting abilities, affect and range of expression always seem false and put me in mind of the first line of Flannery O'Connor's short story, Good Country People:
"Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings."
Therefore it was with some surprise that she seemed to be perfectly cast in Guest in the House. She portrays a conniving, manipulative and malicious addition to a small community of reasonably happy, well meaning but almost uniformly rock stupid people. As her character's character is concealed behind a facade of sticky sweetness, the other folks don't realize her true nature for quite awhile although they become somewhat tired of the fact she constantly plays Liszt's Liebestraum on her phonograph.
No doubt this will sound very familiar to anyone who has seen All About Eve (1950) and one wonders if her performance here, in 1944, germinated into the idea in someone's mind of planting her opposite Bette Davis six years later. As in All About Eve, or Jung's four stages of dream, this introduction moves via Baxter's machinations, to a thickening of the plot, proceeding to crisis and followed by a resolution, of sorts.
I don't quite know if this is a good or bad movie, but I found it a bizarre combination of almost pre-code candor (in isolated spots), generic Hollywood and something harder to define. The resolution, if one can call it that, at the very end was so unexpected that I simply didn't understand what had happened until I watched the finale twice. What had appeared to be Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or some similarly unpleasant, chronic mental illness for the majority of the film, is neatly disposed of as if it was a case of evil instead - shades of The Bad Seed (1956) with a bird phobia substituted for the lightning. However, Baxter's character doesn't actually kill anyone, (that we're aware of), so her finish may have been a bit of preventative maintenance rather than retribution. All in all, a far more satisfying - albeit less sophisticated - close than in All About Eve.
This is a weird little film.
Remark: Guest in the House (which was nominated for an Academy Award for score) was dramatized in episode 27 of the radio program Academy Award Theater on September 25, 1946 with Anita Louise in Anne Baxter's role, and Kirk Douglas in Ralph Bellamy's. It plays much better as 26 minute audio drama - especially since it begins with the announcer solemnly intoning, "This is the story of a diseased personality..." And amazingly, even though Smith, Kline & French's prototype antipsychotic (& LSD antagonist) drug Thorazine (chlorpromazine) was still four or five years or so away, the program's sponsor was Squibb Pharmaceuticals.
XYZ
CONTAINS SPOILERS
I have never understood the appeal of Anne Baxter. Her acting abilities, affect and range of expression always seem false and put me in mind of the first line of Flannery O'Connor's short story, Good Country People:
"Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings."
Therefore it was with some surprise that she seemed to be perfectly cast in Guest in the House. She portrays a conniving, manipulative and malicious addition to a small community of reasonably happy, well meaning but almost uniformly rock stupid people. As her character's character is concealed behind a facade of sticky sweetness, the other folks don't realize her true nature for quite awhile although they become somewhat tired of the fact she constantly plays Liszt's Liebestraum on her phonograph.
No doubt this will sound very familiar to anyone who has seen All About Eve (1950) and one wonders if her performance here, in 1944, germinated into the idea in someone's mind of planting her opposite Bette Davis six years later. As in All About Eve, or Jung's four stages of dream, this introduction moves via Baxter's machinations, to a thickening of the plot, proceeding to crisis and followed by a resolution, of sorts.
I don't quite know if this is a good or bad movie, but I found it a bizarre combination of almost pre-code candor (in isolated spots), generic Hollywood and something harder to define. The resolution, if one can call it that, at the very end was so unexpected that I simply didn't understand what had happened until I watched the finale twice. What had appeared to be Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or some similarly unpleasant, chronic mental illness for the majority of the film, is neatly disposed of as if it was a case of evil instead - shades of The Bad Seed (1956) with a bird phobia substituted for the lightning. However, Baxter's character doesn't actually kill anyone, (that we're aware of), so her finish may have been a bit of preventative maintenance rather than retribution. All in all, a far more satisfying - albeit less sophisticated - close than in All About Eve.
This is a weird little film.
Remark: Guest in the House (which was nominated for an Academy Award for score) was dramatized in episode 27 of the radio program Academy Award Theater on September 25, 1946 with Anita Louise in Anne Baxter's role, and Kirk Douglas in Ralph Bellamy's. It plays much better as 26 minute audio drama - especially since it begins with the announcer solemnly intoning, "This is the story of a diseased personality..." And amazingly, even though Smith, Kline & French's prototype antipsychotic (& LSD antagonist) drug Thorazine (chlorpromazine) was still four or five years or so away, the program's sponsor was Squibb Pharmaceuticals.
XYZ