DRAGONWYCK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 374, 23 August 1946, Page 33

DRAGONWYCK

(20th Century Fox)

INCE upon a time, round about 1840 in fact, in the days of whalebone corsets and tight trousers, there lived on a little place in Connecticut a pure but not highly intelligent

farmer’s daughter named Miranda Wells. You know she’s not highly intelligent because one of the first things She says in the picture is "I think 1 must be loony" and her ruggedly pious father (Walter Huston) subsequently describes her as having no more sense ‘than a tomtit. So it is really not surprising that this simple child should want to go and live with a fabulously wealthy relative named Nicholas van Ryn (Vincent Price) in a fabulous mansion named Dragonwyck up the Hudson River, He says he wishes her to be companion to his little daughter, and perhaps he does at first, but of course as

soon as he sets eyes on her fresh young Hollywood style of beauty you know that he will have other designs. And if Miranda had had just a little more sense than a tomtit she would have known too, and wouldn’t have budged off her father’s farm, because this Nicholas is so obviously a sinister and untrust worthy type. Handsome, of course, and very patrician, but utterly undemocratic -he’s what they call a patroon, one of the survivors of the old Dutch feudal families, and he treats his tenants like serfs and just won’t obey the provisions of the Fair Rents Act. What’s even worse, he’s a rotten atheist. Miranda, on the other hand, whatever else you may say about her, is very religious. So’s her old man; but after he’s had a dip into the family Bible for guidance he decides to let Miranda go to Dragonwyck. It seems that for once he got the wrong answer. So a few scenes later we find Miranda installed in the gloomy, storm-lashed Gothic mansion, sharing the place with nasty Nicholas, his fat wife, a loony housekeeper, a family ghost — and an azalea bush. This azalea bush is rather important because Nicholas, who is apparently a bit of a scientist as well as an atheist and a political reactionary (oh, and I almost forgot, a drug-addict too), uses it in some unexplained way to get rid of his fat wife. Having thus disposed of Spouse No. 1, he stalks straight out of her bedroom into Miranda’s and proposes that she should become Spouse No. 2. And Miranda promptly agrees, which just shows you what an undermining effect the wrong kind of environment can have on a pious, respectable country maid.

Anway, Miranda, after a fairly decent interval has elapsed, marries the wretch, and after that things really begin to get hectic around Dragonwyck. Miranda’s child, the heir on whom Nicholas has set his feudal heart, is born unhealthy and soon dies; this drives Nicholas out of what is left of his mind; he violates the Fair Rents Act worse than ever, causing the farmer-tenants to rise in democratic wrath; the family ghost holds practically non-stop nightly concerts; the storm lashes the walls of Dragonwyck; and Nicholas, chock-full of drugs, begins toying with the azalea bush again. Can nothing save poor Miranda from the madman’s evil clutches? But stay; we have overlooked, in our telling of the tale, the handsome young doctor on the estate who hates the patroon but loves his beautiful wife with what he has thought to be a hopeless passion. Well, there’s your happy ending in sight, and not much imagination required to reach it. When you do you will hear Gene Tierney, in her role as Miranda, remarking (for some reason I can’t remember): "Some dreams are real, so very real they get confused with reality. Then you wake up and find you’ve had a nightmare." Very well put, Miss Tierney, except that I think perhaps you exaggerate a little.