7/10
A poor heiress exposed at the mercy of a beautiful stepmother and her vicious daughter
24 January 2019
This is a chamber drama of a family, as a rich dying father leaves everything to his only daughter, who is beset by her stepmother and her daughter (who then isn't even her half-sister), who of course are interested in the inheritance, as the father only leaves them morsels. The intrigue is how they will go about it, and their method is very similar to that of "Gaslight". There is an old servant of the manor, usuallly drunk, however, whom they don't bother to count with, which is their mistake. They don't get any help either from the opportunist wooer, who thinks it will be easy to marry the heiress for her money, even though he accidentally succeeds in killing the old drunk. The whole thing gets increasingly messed up, and the greedy ladies gradually lose control of what is happening. But it is a very intelligent intrigue, all the absurd turnings of the tale are quite logical when you analyse them, but it could have been made a so much better film. As it is, it is too much condensed, which makes it superficial. A man like Hitchcock would have been needed to film a drama like this, he wouldn't have missed the opportunity for suspense and surprise, but taken better care of the vital crucial moments.
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