This is apparently an adaptation of Henry James' The Aspern Papers, for those (not including me) who are familiar with that work. And very handsome it looks, too: excellent spooky atmosphere of a Venice that is clearly conjured up in Hollywood sets but no less moody for it. There are parts of it that are a bit confusing, but I don't know if that was just me being confused or it being intentionally vague.
Anyway, the film begins with a sort of flash-forward to the present time, and a voice over of our protagonist, as we see from his point of view entering a study full of books and he tells us about legendary poet Jeffrey (!) Ashton, who vanished mysteriously in the mid 1800s in his early 40s. He was known to have conducting an affair with a beautiful young woman called Juliana Bordereau and to have written her a series of scorching love letters that are sort of the Holy Grail of Ashton fans (of whom there are supposed to be legion, as he's presented as a sort of Shelley/Byron amalgam). Then we get a flashback to the younger days of the narrator, who is revealed to be publisher Lewis Venable, waiting for a gondola in Venice to arrive and take him to the house where a now 105-year-old Juliana still lives.
(So this must be somewhere around the early years of the 20th Century, although it's hard to tell from the costumes - and a strange plot feature that I'll come to shortly.) Also on the Gondola is Charles Russell, who I thought was a friend, but Lewis is pretty short with him. Russell seems to think there's a goldmine in tracking down the lost letters (which is Lewis's mission in Venice), but Lewis snaps that it's not about the money. And certainly Lewis doesn't seem to be short of cash, as Juliana, when he finally meets her (Agnes Moorehead, best known for being the mother in Bewitched, then in her 40s but unrecognizable under amazingly good old-crone makeup).
Anyway, he has called ahead and they are expecting him at the villa, which is palatial but mostly abandoned, with the only inhabitants seemingly Juliana, a naive young servant girl Amelia, her strict mother,
and, most importantly, Juliana's "niece" (although, as is obvious to anyone, she's far too young to be the niece of a 105-year-old woman)
Tina (!) Bordereau (it is just me or are "Tina" and "Jeffrey" rather anachronistic names?) played by the former model Susan Hayward. At the time critics were not kind either to the actor playing Lewis (Robert Cummings, who was in a couple of Hitchcocks, most notably Dial M for Murder), whom they described as "unctuous,"
and Hayward, who was described as almost ludicrously stiff as Tina. I can sort of see their point: she is chilly to the extreme, and in fact we were strongly reminded in a couple of places of Cloris Leachman as Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein. But it works pretty well for the film, which requires that one give oneself up to the atmosphere. Which is very Rebecca-verging-on-Wuthering Heights.
The players: Amelia is terrified that ice queen Tina will find out about the stray cats that she allows in the house, genuinely afraid that she will kill them. And Tina really does not seem to want Lewis in the house. However, once she introduces Lewis to Juliana (at this meeting we just see the back of her chair and her claw-like hand, complete with giant jeweled ring, that we later discover was a gift from Jeffrey) Juliana makes it clear that whether or not Tina wants it, they have to do it, because they are out of money. And to that end, where a price of 200 (I can't remember the unit of currency, but it wasn't lire, and it wasn't pounds, although later Julian does use "English pounds" as currency) a month rent had been agreed in advance, the price is now 1000, and the rooms are "unfurnished" (although, confusingly, they aren't). That's right - Lewis is pretending to be a writer of a different name, who needs a place to finish his novel. His rooms are isolated on one side of the house, with the evident hope that he will use his own entrance and not bother anyone else. However, he goes a-snooping at night, and the owl-eared Juliana hears him creeping past her room and calls him in. We get to see her face this time - think Davros, creator of the Daleks (same claw-like hand, too, and this time Lewis notices that the ring is missing). She offers him a miniature of Jeffrey painted by her father for 1000 English pounds, but the money is to be given to the priest
who visits regularly, and Tina is not to know. Juliana even seems a bit afraid of Tina. Leaving her room, Jeffrey hears strange music playing (again the Frau Blücher echoes, only this time it's piano, not violin). Following the sound to a part of the house that is otherwise deserted, he is preceded by one of the cats. They both come upon a transformed Tina playing the piano,
and where daytime Tina is all buttoned up and buttoned down, this one has let her hair down and is wild and happy (and likes cats). And she thinks Lewis is Jeffrey! And that she is Juliana! And this is where the film gets confusing. Has Jeffrey stepped back in time? Well, it appears not. Instead Tina (who is wearing the ring that went missing from Juliana's finger) has a split personality. And as we discover later from Juliana, it's because Juliana read the famous love letters to her as a child (!) and eventually, when Juliana's eyes gave out, Tina read them to her, until Tina became too wrapped up in them, and took them away, and now every night becomes Juliana. And scarily for Juliana, Tina becomes convinced that Juliana is a hated older servant, whom she despises to a possibly fatal extent.
But now Lewis knows where the letters are! They're in the room with the piano. He just needs the key and to find a moment when Tina isn't around. But Charlie is back in the picture and threatens to expose him! And the priest tells him that maybe if Tina could find somebody to love as Tina, she wouldn't need the Juliana personality. But what did happen to Jeffrey back then?
It all canters to a suitably melodramatic ending. Will Lewis ever get to see the letters? Will he be tempted, if he gets his hands on them, just to do a runner (say, by means of the Orient Express)? Who could blame him, wanting to get out of that mad house...
An odd, flawed, but very atmospheric film. And the only film made by the director Martin Gabel (who acted in some films, including Marnie) - apparently he so infuriated Hayward by interrupting her line readings that she threw something at him.
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