People are voting emotionally.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The acting in this movie is really good.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Not uncommonly in Film-Noir you had the villain as the 'lead'. The Third Man notwithstanding, they were out there, and some more sympathetic than others (one that jumps to mind right away is a character who becomes a villain over the course of the story, Fritz Lang's own Scarlet Street). What's notable about his low-budget film House by the River is how nasty the main character is, and how much he loves being it. Even before plot point numero-uno where writer Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) "accidentally" strangles his maid after trying to force a big fat kiss on to her and gets his limping, weak-but-not-stupid brother to help him dump the body in the river, he looks creepy. He gazes out his window like a bourgeois monster. If you'd told me Luis Bunuel had directed these opening scenes I'd believe you. He's so much a jerk at the start, and whatever sympathy we might feel at first for being an "accident" (must use quotes) goes away pretty fast. He makes Jack Torrance look peachy-keen by comparison.There is a story that does unfold in some melodramatic fashion - mostly involving the guilt Stephen's brother John (Lee Bowman, perhaps by default more subtle with some of his acting save for a courtroom scene where he always clenches his fists) - but it's more about mood I think for Lang here. He didn't have much money to play with, and it shows in some moments, not to mention limited sets and a cast that has no one, frankly, I could recognize. If anything I had to think that he cast Hayward as Orson Welles was unavailable (he seriously resembles him if not totally in appearance than in facial mannerisms and speech, that or the grown-up version of Vincent Kartheiser on Mad Men). Hayward is Lang's wild-card here; if a scene isn't quite picking up steam or the dialog is a little average, Hayward will puck up and just eat the scene around the actors.You ever heard of the healing power of writing about your own crimes? How much you dig that depends on how much you dig scene chewing. Considering how much we are certainly NOT meant to identify with this character, that he's a murderer who keeps trying to get away with crap (not to mention WRITING ABOUT IT in a new book where he feels "free finally) and getting a look on his face like "Hmmm, oh, yeah, that's... cool" after Stephen realizes the burlap sack holding the ex-maid has his brother's initials all over it. I dug it, and I kept looking forward to the next moment when he would get a little wackier and more deranged. To be sure this did lead to a hilariously warped ending - a factor from the Hayes Code days perhaps, though it does allow for a fun little "surprise" gag involving another character. But it's all in creating good tension and suspense, which, while not ever "great", is decent for such a story where circumstance and trust issues are a big thing, how the wife loses trust, grows closer to John Byrne, the brother becomes an outcast, etc.What does save it from being just a pot-boiler in Victorian-era garb, or it being a bizarre tale of the breaking of writer's block (or lifts it up as that), is Lang as director. He just has a way about framing faces and places, getting the most buck from the darkness that surrounds these people. It goes a way to explain how at times characters, like Stephen's wife Marjorie, comments upon the darkness all around. This is in the era before most lights were electrical, which allows for a lot of scenes of characters hiding in the shadows of rooms without the aid of a lamp, peering around the side as a person comes knocking at a door or goes walking down a hallway.If Lang does anything to try to get the audience to understand (as opposed to identify) with Stephen, and successfully, it's that, the paranoia, the growing delirium of this dead body creating horror all around. It's not supposed to be a horror movie, but it's hard not to shake it, especially when Stephen has to go by boat at night to try and find that burlap sack. By the way Lang frames and edits Stephen in his little boat, it's a wonder the river doesn't eat him up and burp up a soiled dickey. This is a case where a script isn't ever "bad", but the direction certainly elevates it from what it could have been, which was forgettable. It's hard to forget some of these images, almost despite the predictable melodrama.

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?

The most interesting aspect of House By The River is the fact that it was produced at Republic Pictures, the home of Roy Rogers and several other B movie cowboys and the values those pictures put forth. Hardly the place for a moody and atmospheric thriller that examines a man's moral degeneracy directed by Fritz Lang who always likes to explore the dark. One thing that does mark this as a Republic film is the usual Herbert J. Yates economy.But for a director like Lang who was used to exploring shadowy worlds, economy on the set isn't a hindrance, though back in Germany this man directed the opulent Metropolis. House By The River delivers the most for its meager budget.Louis Hayward who was a poor man's Tyrone Power and like Power could play straight heroes and hero/heels gets his Nightmare Alley type role as the rich and idle writer who just can't move the writer's block. He takes a real fancy to maid Dorothy Patrick and when she repulses his advances, Hayward kills her. He gets older and club footed brother Lee Bowman to dump the body in the river. But as dead bodies will do, they bloat and have a nasty habit of floating to the top.Lang and Hayward create a really frightening picture of moral degeneracy that would have resonated well with post World War II audiences who had just defeated a nation gripped in the philosophy that it was a race of super people. Jane Wyatt gets her innings in playing Hayward's wife who Bowman also loved and who starts thinking that maybe she married the wrong brother.I have to single out Jody Gilbert from the cast who plays Bowman's housekeeper and who Bowman takes his frustrations out on after he's helped Hayward. She's not the sharpest knife in the drawer and misreads all of Bowman's signals and later does him damage at a coroner's inquest. I'm not sure how much money House By The River brought in to Republic Pictures, but it is a minor masterpiece for this studio.

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