I watched Fritz Lang's HOUSE BY THE RIVER, because I was curious about seeing Jane Wyatt in a Gothic noir. After all, most people remember her as the wife on TV's Father Knows Best.Also, I was curious about Lang directing a picture at Republic Pictures, a studio known mostly for its moderately budgeted programmers and B-films. Would it even be any good? Rest assured, it was.Lang's story is very atmospheric and makes good use of on-location exteriors involving a corpse floating down river. The set design for the mansion is intriguing, and Wyatt does a rather convincing job as a society wife who comes to discover that husband Louis Hayward is a nefarious murderer. On another note, I have a feeling that Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed HOUSE BY THE RIVER and borrowed from it when making PSYCHO. The way the body is wrapped up and 'drowned' in the water seems repeated in Hitchcock's film. Plus, there's a line where a character says the killer is like a harmless fly...and that is definitely repeated at the end of PSYCHO. Then there's the mansion-- it seems like a looming character in HOUSE BY THE RIVER, just like it does in PSYCHO.

A deranged writer (Louis Hayward) murders a maid (Dorothy Patrick) after she resists his advances. The writer engages his brother (Lee Bowman) to help in hiding the body...Richard Brody wrote, "Every detail of the film, from its opening shots of the nearby river and the wind in the trees, has moral resonance. Stephen promises to change, but from the moment that he listens lasciviously to Emily's bathwater sluicing down a drainpipe his bad end is already foretold —- and the elements of nature, the wind and the water, are the ultimate agents of his doom." How can I argue with such a poetic interpretation of this film? Whether intended by Lang to be so symbolic or not, Brody nails it and gives the film a new lease on life. While this may not be Fritz Lang's best work, or even his best noir, it is a fine piece of cinema with all sorts of moral ambiguity that deserves recognition.I watched the film on Netflix. It was not completely restored and the picture was full-screen. Perhaps a better version exists out there or could be made?

House by the River is directed by Fritz Lang and adapted by Mel Dinelli from A.P. Herbert's novel The House on the River. It stars Louis Hayward, Jane Wyatt, Lee Bowman & Dorothy Patrick. Music is by George Antheil and photography by Edward J. Cronjager.Novelist Stephen Byrne (Hayward) makes a play for the house maid and unwittingly kills her when she repels his advances. Enlisting the help of his disabled brother, John (Bowman), to dispose of the body in the river, Stephen suddenly finds that the publicity surrounding the maid's disappearance has put him in vogue again. In fact he finds his muse sufficiently stoked enough to craft another novel. But as easy as Stephen finds it easy to have no conscience, the opposite is the case with John, and with the river refusing to hold its secrets, something is going to give.Working out of Republic pictures, Lang refused to let the low budget production hamper his vision of a bleak Cain & Abel like Gothic-noir-melodrama. He did, however, meet some resistance when requesting that the maid be played by a black woman, which was quickly shot down by nervous executives at the famed "B" movie studio. House by the River is far from being among the best of Lang's work, but the final product is still a triumph considering it's basically a three character piece set virtually in just two locations. It scores high on eerie atmosphere and finds Lang dealing in moral bankruptcy/responsibility and the eye for an eye mentality. Ushered into the narrative, too, is a Lang fave of people irked by loving someone they can't have. These themes allow the director to gloss over the simple script and dally in some truly arresting visuals.Aided considerably by Cronjager's (Desert Fury/CanyonPassage) chiaroscuro photography, Lang's film is a lesson in how to maximise effect from limited sets. The actual house on the river, and that of the neighbour (resplendent with creepy scarecrow in garden), has a very disquiet feel to it, fronted by shimmering water that carries the dead carcass' of animals, it's a most haunting setting. And the eerie atmosphere continues inside the house, where shadows work their wonders and Antheil's music sticks rigidly (and rightly) to the creaky house formula. The cast don't pull up any trees, but they don't need to. Hayward is perhaps too animated for a study in snide villainy, but it works and he has a nice line in visual mocking. The rest fall in line for what is required, with the best of the bunch being Ann Shoemaker as nosey neighbour Mrs. Ambrose.Once a hard to find film, House by the River is now easily accessible after gaining a DVD release (the print is fine, some age spotting and crackles, but completely watchable). It's a film that is easily recommended to Lang and Gothic house based movie purists. Driven by a despicable protagonist and cloaked in a creepy noirish vibe, it deserves to now gain a better and more appreciative audience. 7.5/10

In spite of being a part of Fritz Lang's fascinating shift from Nietzschean supermen to everyman protagonists suddenly pitted in a situation of life and death, House By the River is a mere exercise for him. He makes little use of the limited abilities of the cast, the setting, the story and even lets the film fly with a particularly shabby ending. The film remains enjoyable for the most part as a thriller about an unhinged central character, a guilt- consumed accomplice, a terrible crime, and the symbolic shift of fate caused by the nearby river. The story sets in motion right away, taking advantage of the development of the characters before we know much about them, Lang viewing each complicit, suspicious and unwary character with an omniscient eye. His impartiality is what I most admire about this almost-but-not-quite effort, because the decisions the characters make, the mistakes, the virtues, everything is vulnerable to the forces of nature which surround them.Each nuance, from the opening shots of the neighboring river and the wind in the trees, has a conscientious reverberation. Our anti-hero declares to change, but the characters of environment, the wind and the water, are the decisive intermediaries of whether he will succeed or not in breaking or committing to that promise. This is a great device, but the film is particularly weak in so many departments, mainly in comparison to Lang's previous and subsequent films noir which hit the nail on the head, like M, Scarlet Street, Hangmen Also Die, The Big Heat and Human Desire, all top-notch achievements that show his effortless capability for much stronger acting and symbolic resolutions. With House By the River, he seems to want to return to his more Gothic roots, perhaps even to the extent of his Expressionist silent films, and the cinematography is generally fine save for the finale, when expression is needed most. Louis Hayward, who plays the dubious protagonist, stands out, but only in comparison to his surrounding ensemble.