DIRECTOR: Andre de TothNoir may conjure images of city streets bathed in neon, but some of the best noirs take place outside of the asphalt jungle.
COUNTRY: USA
CAST: Merle Oberon, Franchot Tone, Thomas Mithell, Elisha Cook Jr., Rex Ingram
CINEMATOGRAPHY: John Mescall, Archie Stout
MUSIC: Miklos Rozsa
GENRE: Noir, gothic, romance
MISCELLANY: 90m; bw; VHS
In Andre de Toth's "Dark Waters," moonlight filters through the kudzu and lacy plantation railings of a Louisiana bayou, and the murky waters and creeping vines reflect the deception and suspicion lurking behind smiling faces.
In a recent post, we explored the shades between noir and gothic melodrama. "Dark Waters" can be classified as a noir but better fits the gothic category. Not only does it have a female lead, but she is a damsel in distress trapped in a mansion that architecturally expresses her fears.
After heiress Leslie Calvin, played by Merle Oberon, survives her parents in a boat sinking, she finds herself traumatized and alone, save an aunt and uncle who invite her to convalesce at their plantation. But when she arrives, her doddering relatives are hardly comforting, and the household is being controlled by two shady characters, Mr. Sydney and Cleeve, the latter played by perennial kicked-around sidekick Elisha Cook Jr. Fortunately, a country doctor who fancies Leslie provides an outsider's perspective, even if he's a bit overbearing himself.
"Dark Waters" brims with unfulfilled promise with its stark photography, dark score and swampy setting. The actors do little things that make them convincing as menacing eccentrics. Yet the script's rhythm seems off; tension never develops. There are too many episodes that halt abruptly, too many harsh cuts from night to morning.
Oberon does what she can, but the script's treatment of Leslie's psychological journey lacks depth. Leslie randomly teeters from helpless to determined. One minute she wishes she was underwater with her parents, the next she is the belle of the cajun dance party, only to be thrown back randomly into the throes of despair.
Although the pacing proves fatal to the movie as a whole, there are plenty of atmosphere-rich segments that make submerging yourself in the "bayou noir" world of "Dark Waters" worthwhile.
— Becky
RELATED ARTICLE:
• Femme fatale, gothic heroine: Extreme female archetypes in cinema. A concept put forth in a book by Helen Hanson, "Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film," liberates discussion about those dusty damsels-in-distress of forties and fifties cinema who have been overshadowed by the dames of noir.
• Femme fatale, gothic heroine: Extreme female archetypes in cinema. A concept put forth in a book by Helen Hanson, "Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film," liberates discussion about those dusty damsels-in-distress of forties and fifties cinema who have been overshadowed by the dames of noir.
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