THE HAUNTING (1963)

I know that my Dad thought that “The Haunting,” was the scariest film he ever saw.

Eschewing overt violence and even physical threat, the film maintains an overwhelming atmosphere of psychological dread.

This claustrophobic, black and white, character driven horror tale might seem a departure for Robert Wise, the director of the sweeping, colorful, vibrant musicals “West Side Story” two years earlier and “The Sound of Music” two years later. But it harkens back to Wise’s days as an editor for Val Lewton, a producer whose low budget horror tales emphasized the unseen over the seen and the suggested over the explicit. Wise’s directorial debut, “The Curse of the Cat People,” a deceptively titled, beautifully etched coming-of-age tale, was produced for Lewton’s unit at RKO Pictures. “The Haunting” would be Wise’s last black and white film.

So what makes “The Haunting” so scary? What’s in Wise’s directorial tool box that’s used to create such a sense of unease and dread?

First, the vividly drawn characters in this ensemble piece, each a familiar stock character endowed with believable psychological depth, have detailed back stories that link their psyches inextricably to the back story of the house itself and the events that unfold there. The haunting becomes psychologically personal. Shirley Jackson, author of the short story “The Lottery,” that perennial favorite of high school English teachers, wrote the 1959 novel. Television scribe Nelson Gidding, screenwriter on the Susan Hayward shocker “I Want To Live” and later of “The Andromeda Strain,” both directed by Wise, provided the screenplay.

Copied and plagiarized numerous times, it’s now a familiar set-up – paranormal investigators ensconce themselves in a purportedly haunted house to prove or disprove the existence of the supernatural. But in 1959 and 1963, it was a fairly original treatment of the classic haunted house genre.

Wise, director of photography Davis Bolton and camera operator Alan McCabe use all the cinematic tricks at their disposal. High contrast photography provides impenetrable, threatening shadows. Deep focus makes the sinister surroundings a constant, palpable presence, while newly produced wide angle Panavision anamorphic lenses distort the environment. Compositions emphasize disturbing elements in the house – silent statues, half-opened doors, anthropomorphic patterns and designs in the walls. Infrared film turns the exterior skies a murky black, even in daytime. Canted angles make the house seem off-balance. In fact, the camera work continually makes the house seem alive, watchful and threatening.

But it’s the use of sound that buoys the horror, whether it is the almost subliminal whispers, the pounding on the doors and walls, or the unnerving music score of British composer Humphrey Searle, a marriage of the styles of Bernard Herrmann and James Bernard by way of Schoenberg.



What scene did my Dad remember most from this movie? The door ...



I was exposed to “The Haunting” on the CBS Late Movie in the early 70’s.

 

I would watch it alone in our basement, often becoming too scared, or too sleepy, to finish it. I saw it numerous times in its television pan-and-scan version. In its original theatrical format, preserved in recent DVD releases, the picture was 2.35 times as wide as it was tall. On television, the width was reduced to 1.33 times as wide as tall, requiring that about half of the picture be cropped, and destroying the film’s careful photographic compositions. To follow the action, the cropped image was "panned and scanned." Having become so accustomed to the cropped version, I was shocked when as an adult I finally saw the un-cropped, letterboxed version on DVD. Although I am a strong proponent of using letterboxing to preserve the filmmakers’ intentions, and there is no doubt that the original compositions in this film are powerful tools in creating suspense, there was something disconcerting and frightening in the claustrophobic effect caused by the combination of cropping and wide angle lens distortion found in the television version. And I am embarrassed to admit that I sometimes miss the version that so terrified and thrilled me as a youngster.




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The opening ...



 © 2009 Edward Bowen