One of the higher profile UFA directors to leave Nazi Germany for L.A. in the ‘Thirties, Joe May never got the break needed to maintain top-tier status after MUSIC IN THE AIR/’34, his first Hollywood film, underperformed.* (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/03/music-in-air-1934.html). Relegated to B-pics for the rest of a truncated career, he still managed to make a few good ones, including this discount Universal Pictures period piece taken from the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic about a haunted family in a haunted house. Streamlined to work on a tight budget, we pick up the story after a few generations of Pyncheons have gone thru a family fortune cursed by deceit and theft. That’s their deceit and theft. Now, it’s brother vs. brother as apparently wealthy (secretly bankrupt) George Sanders accuses artist brother Vincent Price of their father’s murder. Instead of marrying cousin Margaret Lindsay, Price is off to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Sanders was already a past master in the cad department, but Price was new to this strain of Gothic guilt that would largely define his career after this. And Lindsay, just released from Warners where she was the blandest of leading ladies, comes thru for once when she drops the ingenue act and gets to play sorrowful spinster. With better than average supporting players (for Universal, that is), decent art direction and Milton Krasner’s atmospheric b&w lensing, the film is something of an undiscovered treat.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: May’s UFA best probably ASPHALT/’29. (Most of his silent works hard to find or long lost.) His Hollywood best probably CONFESSION/’37. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/asphalt-1929.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/confession-1937.html
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *As is still the custom, Hollywood execs, looking at his film’s grosses rather than his films, gave May short shrift on better assignments. OR: it may have been May’s officious on-set demeanor which gave Fritz Lang a run for his money.
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