The House on Telegraph Hill **** (1951, Richard Basehart, Valentina Cortese, William Lundigan) – Classic Movie Review 8228

Director Robert Wise’s 1951 20th Century Fox black and white film noir thriller The House on Telegraph Hill stars Valentina Cortese [aka Valentina Cortesa] as Victoria Kowelska, a Polish concentration camp victim who takes over the identity of a woman (Natasha Lytess) when she dies in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War Two.

In San Francisco after the war, camp survivor Victoria finds out that the dead woman has a son Christopher (Gordon Gebert), now supposedly hers. The boy’s great-aunt dies and the kid becomes the heir to a fortune, and Victoria marries the boy’s murderous trustee and guardian Alan Spender (Richard Basehart). They move into the The House on Telegraph Hill, and Victoria’s new husband promptly tries to kill her.

The House on Telegraph Hill is a complex, satisfying and really strong and solid suspense thriller, with a highly unusual plot, well-etched characters, a good noir atmosphere, and nifty, top-rate performances.

Elick Moll and Frank Partos’s neat and involving screenplay is based on Dana Lyon’s novel The Frightened Child, and the film is moved along tightly, economically and atmospherically by director Wise. The running time is just 93 minutes.

The film was an Oscar nominee for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White (John DeCuir, Lyle R Wheeler, Thomas Little, Paul S Fox).

Also in the cast are William Lundigan, Fay Baker, Steven Geray, Kei Thin Chung, Herbert Butterfield, Natasha Lytess, John Burton, Katherine Meskill, Mario Siletti, Charles Wagenheim, David Clarke, Tamara Schee, Ashmead Scott, Mari Young, Tom McDonough, Henry Rowland, Leslie K O’Pace, Don Kohler and Harry Carter.

Valentina Cortese (1 January 1923 – 10 July 2019).

Cortese and Basehart met while making The House on Telegraph Hill together and married in 1951. They had one son (actor Jackie Basehart) and divorced in 1960. Cortese did not marry again. She died on 10 July 2019, aged 96.

Under her 1948 contract with 20th Century Fox  she starred in Malaya (1949), Thieves’ Highway (1949), The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) and The Barefoot Contessa (1954).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8228

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