Dragonwyck

I believe in myself, and I am answerable to myself! I will not live according to printed mottoes like the directions on a medicine bottle!

Dragonwyck is directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz who also adapts the screenplay from the Anya Seton novel of the same name. It stars Vincent Price, Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Glenn Langan, Anne Revere, Jessica Tandy and Spring Byington. Music is by Alfred Newman and cinematography by Arthur C. Miller.

Connecticut farm girl Miranda Wells (Tierney) is recruited by her aristocratic patroon cousin Nicholas Van Ryan (Price) to be governess to his young daughter at his Hudson Valley mansion. Originally thinking it to be a new step up in life, Miranda finds that Nicholas and the Dragonwyck mansion have...

Vincent Price excels in this sinister romance that has shades of Hitchcock's "Rebecca" (1940) about it. Gene Tierney ("Miranda") is brought up in a devoutly religious family under the auspices of the zealous "Ephraim" (Walter Huston) when she is offered the chance of a lifetime by her distant cousin "Nicholas van Ryn" (Price) to go and live in his mansion "Dragonwyck" to help care for his wife. When she dies, "Miranda" returns to her family only to be surprised when she is followed by her erstwhile host with an offer of marriage. What occurs now is a wonderfully - if, maybe a bit slowly, paced thriller as we just know - but we don't - that there is much more to "van Ryn" than initially meets the eye. His high-handedness and superiority is w...