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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

BFC - The Haunting

04:09 / 03.01.06

So who watched the movie? Thoughts? Opinions?

I thought it was quite a good horror movie. I didn't exactly jump out of my seat or vomit over anyone, but it did make me squirm a little. Obviously most older horror films suffer in this way, as all the techniques they used to scare have been appropriated (probably many times over) by more recent films.

In this case though, I thought its more cliched plot devices (ie. Haunted houses, dodgy staircases, etc) were used with an innocence that was charming. Obviously, this is because its an older horror film, but it had such a cosy familiar feel that it made me want to be entertained. I knew what was going to happen in the end, but it didn't matter.

Incidentally, did anyone else feel that the plot reminded them of a scooby-doo cartoon? (Not that I think this is a bad thing...)

09:48 / 03.01.06

Well, it's a classic set-up, to be sure—that's one of the conventions that the novelist Shirley Jackson and director Robert Wise were playing with.

But in the end I think it subverts those conventions and functions, really, as a psychological horror film, and those are tricky to pull off. Any discussion of THE HAUNTING must center, I think, on how Wise and co. pull off the device of the unreliable narrator. Most of the action of the film (and even moreso in the book) is filtered through the conciousness of the Julie Harris character, Eleanor. And it's possible to read the story as charting Eleanor's descent into madness.

The thing is, Eleanor is pretty well off her rocker to begin with. And that presents a major storytelling challenge: the audience needs a baseline against which to measure the weirdness of events, and Eleanor is so damaged to start with...

Discuss: How do Wise's camera and compositional sense convey Eleanor's deep and crippling narcissism?

This is preliminary, top-of-my-head stuff, here. Much more later, I promise.

15:03 / 03.01.06

What Jack Fear said.

And furthermore, it's worth noting that The Haunting really DOES make me jump out of my seat with every viewing - a feat that's scarcely been repeated by any subsequent genre horror film.

In fact, it's the text-book example of the "subtley + technique + intelligence = good horror" / "they don't make em like that any more!" argument that I'm often prone to launch into.

The plot elements and scene set-ups may as you say have become hackneyed (assuming they weren't in the first place - how old ARE the conventions of haunted house stories anyway?)through subsequent overuse and imitations, but what makes the Haunting continue to stand out as an excellent film is the fact that it's clearly made by talented people who have put some serious thought into what can make a motion picture engaging and frightening... and have carried it all out flawlessly.

15:30 / 03.01.06

A few words about director Robert Wise: He was an old-style Hollywood journeyman in that he directed many different kinds of films, in many genres—mysteries, Westerns, historicals, comedies, combat pictures, and two of the best-loved musicals of all time (West Side Story and The Sound Of Music). He seemed to have a special affinity for the fantastic, though, and every SF and horror fan worth his salt has seena few Wise films, even if s/he doesn’t know it: Curse of the Cat People, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Andromeda Strain, even the first Star Trek movie.

Some of his most interesting gigs, though, came early in his career. In 1941 he was the editor on Citizen Kane—and a year later he was called in to edit The Magnificent Ambersons in Welles’s absence (and—perhaps—against his wishes, though stories vary). Whether because of Wise’s efforts or despite them, the film was eventually taken away from Welles completely and recut by divers hands into near-incomprehensibility.

Wise’s work with Welles informs The Haunting, I think: Hill House is a character in itself, much like Kane’s Xanadu or the Amberson’s gloomy Gothic mansion, and I think Wise took a lot of his approach—the use of deep focus, the dramatic lighting, the sense of place-as-actor—from Welles.

Wise’s very first gigs in the early 1930s, when he was barely in his twenties, were as a sound-effects editor—and that comes through in The Haunting, too. Brilliant use of sound in the nighttime visitations—the deafening booms, the whimpering, the voices that never quite into anything audible. Superbly unsettling stuff.

And subtle, too. That’s the real genius of The Haunting: how it manages from a few ingredients—ugly wallpaper, a stick of chalk, dry ice and a rubber door—to concoct an atmosphere of real dread.

Robert Wise died just a few months ago, September 2005, at the age of 91: he lived long enough to record a commentary track for the Criterion DVD release of The Haunting, and comes off as smart, self-effacing, and a true gentleman.

IMDb page for The Haunting here, BTW. Look for the cameo by Miss Moneypenny.

17:06 / 03.01.06

Another notion to throw out here—and I'm particularly interested in Rizla's take on this—does anyone else get a slight whiff of the Old Providence Spook off this film (and the source novel)? The crazy geometry of Hill House ("There's not a right angle in the place") is the obvious giveaway—but also the undefined, ambiguous nature of just What haunts Hill House—the notion that there was something Wrong with the plac even before the first death occured there: "Some houses are born bad," says Markway, and the Greek idiom he uses—"a leprous house"—strikes me as particularly Lovecraftian.

18:03 / 03.01.06

I had the fortune of catching this before bedtime last night and I have some things still fresh in my mind.

The only thing that was hard for me to get through was the narration in the beginning. Eleanor was a bit annoying to me and the words being spoken seemed a tad heavy-handed. As the film picked up steam though, it became less and less of an issue for me.

I responded quite a bit to the audible but indecipherable sounds that echoed and crashed in the night. Combining this with good camerawork and the juxtapositions of the two women's faces as they scanned the room and watched in horror was quite good too. Anything that hints at but doesn't give away is almost always good horror.

More on the camera work: I liked how the camera became more abstract as the film went on. Following the sounds as they moved behind the molding of the door. Coming in from above as Eleanor sat in bed thinking to herself. Searching out and just catching a small glimpse of something. Quite good.

I loved the rubber door. This coming from a huge Cronenberg fan though.

It was just enough of a step up into something more visually concrete to heighten the tension.

Jack: I didn't fully realize who Robert Wise was but I'm glad you gave us a lot of his background to chew on. I like the similarities that you pointed out in the narratives he had a part in and the fact that a house plays as an addition to the cast. Insightful. Beyond watching The Haunting for the first time this week, I also saw Andromeda Strain as well. Also a very excellent movie and unnerving as well. Both inhabiting different spaces but both playing on the audience's tension quite well.

18:59 / 03.01.06

The only thing that was hard for me to get through was the narration in the beginning. Eleanor was a bit annoying to me and the words being spoken seemed a tad heavy-handed. As the film picked up steam though, it became less and less of an issue for me.

Eleanor's voice-over is a dicey gambit, I'll admit—perhaps less so in its day than now: the conventions of moviemaking have changed in the last 40 years, after all—and it is indeed a hurdle for modern film-watchers to get past.

But it's a necessary device, I think, to establish the unreliable-narrator dynamic I hinted at above—to show us just how self-absorbed and neurotic Eleanor is, by literally letting us listen in on her thoughts.

It's a very literary conceit, of course, and it's central to the effect of Shirley Jackson's novel—everything is literally All About Eleanor. Because it's so interiorized, and because so much of its power depends on the ambiguity caused by that interiorization (that is, even assuming the objective reality of the events at Hill House, there's still the open question of the extent to which those events are caused by malevolent supernatural entities, or by Eleanor's own telekinetic ability, about which she is in deep denial), The Haunting of Hill House really seems one of those "unfilmable" novels.

Wise & co. mostly pull it off, though, and the voice-over makes it possible—setting us up to understand Eleanor's pettiness, her insecurity, the way she imagines all the other principles to fall in love with her in turn, her habitual lying; mostly, the gnawing incompleteness of her which makes Hill House so seductive to her, and which is the source of her death wish—or that gives Hill House its entry into her, and enables it to destroy her, depending on your interpretation.

Henningjohnathan

21:17 / 03.01.06

Is this the movie that had that great bit of dialogue -

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

"I don't know, but I believe that almost anything can happen to a man inside his own mind."

In the end, I think the central horror of a ghost story is the same as in a nightmare. The ghost is inescapable because essentially it's inside you. There is no way to keep it out or escape it.

00:44 / 04.01.06

A few links...

Wikipedia - Robert Wise
Bright Lights Interview with Robert Wise - Not bad, but quite short.
UC Berkley Interview with RW - Still reading, but seems to have more meat.

03:12 / 05.01.06

ok I've re-watched the first half...

Discuss: How do Wise's camera and compositional sense convey Eleanor's deep and crippling narcissism?

Initially, I disagreed with your describing what was wrong with Eleanor as narcissism, but having re-watched I have to agree. Her focus on her own needs and thoughts (and thus the house) shape the plot more than anything else. Most of the shots have Eleanor as the focal point, even when she isn't the only one in frame or even close to the camera.

Watch the scene just before we first see Dr Markway: Theo is just as important in the scene and mostly always closer to the camera, but you get a sense that it is all happening around Eleanor and everyone else is sideline attraction.

Also, did anyone notice how the camera is SLIGHTLY lower than Eleanors eye height? It allows her to fill the frame a little more than usual, and everything looms slightly. Not enough to really throw you, but just enough. Of course, there are shots with a much lower angle than that, but scenes that would otherwise be at eye level are all shot in this way.

Its interesting to compare the film to that other iconic horror film of the time, Psycho. Certain scenes are quite similar, but Wise has his camera always near Eleanor or framing her, where Hitchcock seems more interested in shaping a sinister world for all his characters to reside in.

Also Wise, in what seems like Hitchcock mode, allows what would otherwise be older furnishings, architraves, etc, convey a real sense of dread. eg. When we first get into the house, he points the camera up letting the ceiling almost crush the viewer.

On the Eleanor's Mind = Hill House idea, did anyone take note of the unusual wording of the voice-over before the credits?

"An evil old house, the kind some people call haunted, is like an undiscovered country waiting to be explored."

Is it just me, or does that seem more like a description of someones mind than a house?

14:54 / 07.01.06

Is this the movie that had that great bit of dialogue...

...no.

I think the central horror of a ghost story is the same as in a nightmare. The ghost is inescapable because essentially it's inside you. There is no way to keep it out or escape it.

Maybe. But The Haunting really isn't a ghost story per se—it's part of another horror subgenre, the Bad Place story. (See also: The Shining, The Amityville Horror, and so forth.) There is no ghost as such, no spectral figure, no particular sense of an individual intelligence directing events at Hill House. The villain of the piece, if you will, is not a ghost inhabiting Hill House, but Hill House itself.

It is possible to "escape" in a Bad Place story, either by fleeing the site, destroying the site, or both. Four of the eventual five ghostbusters in The Haunting do, in fact, flee Hill House.

Eleanor's tragedy is that she really has nowhere to flee to: her life is so broken that, for her, Hill House itself is the escape.

20:47 / 12.05.07

That´s the first movie since Event Horizon that has made me look over my shoulder. I watched it tonight, and really liked it. All the actors were so sincere and likeable, I expected Dr. Markway would puff on a pipe any moment. I had also seen the remake and there really is a world of difference between them. The best moment for me was what happened at the top of the staircase, I certainly didn´t see that one coming. Maybe I´ll watch the remake again (which also has its moments) and see how I feel about it now after having seen the original movie.

And now also my interest for more of these old haunting movies is piqued.