DRAGONWYCK (1946) **1/2 It's a shame that the public at large didn't recognize Vincent Price as an aristocrat as being at least as scary as Bela Lugosi as a vampire, or any of those werewolf guys. Might have saved us, at least, from decades of Reganomics. But they didn't. So Vincent's manners are impeccable beyond belief-an absolute gentleman's gentleman and I don't mean butler. And he has that way of saying the perfect thing, that makes it sound true even when it isn't, and amplifies the truth when it is: his comment about the wind and Gene Tierney's face would be romance for the ages if...he'd felt it. He meant it, it was true, he just didn't feel it. Ann Revere's performance is memorable only for not being memorable, which is almost as disappointing as surprising. Fortunately-how can I say this even if it's true?-she isn't in the film much. Harry Morgan and, especially, Jessica Tandy are way better. But for all the agrarian land reform and metaphysical posturing, and powerful linkage between self-centeredness and addiction, the film never reaches the levels where it's as terrifying as the magnitude of its ambition suggests that it might. It's partly that Price is nearly as silly as some of the big scenes as he is brilliant in the throwaways, it's partly that as sympathetic as Gene is in some ways, it's never enough to engender empathy, and it's partly just that it never quite starts firing on all its apparent and splendid cylinders.
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