Too much of everything

Good concept, poorly executed.

A Masterpiece!

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

"House on Telegraph Hill" was nominated for Best Art & Sets Oscar, but lost out to Streetcar. It opens with Valentina Cortese in a Nazi concentration camp, and she manages to get to the states by posing as her dead friend, who just HAPPENS to be heir to a huge house and fortune in san francisco. Then the adventures begin. She wonders if someone is trying to "off" her to get to the wealth... is she right? and WHO ? Richard Basehart and Bill Lundigan are war buddies, and may or may not be involved. One is the hubby and one is hubby's best friend. Or maybe the housekeeper. Or someone else… Some great old outdoor scenes of the city. Wonder how many scenes are real and how many are backdrops. Based on the book by Dana Lyon, who lived and worked in san francisco. Directed by Robert Wise, who certainly worked on some biggies - Sound of Music, West Side Story, both of which he won for best director!

The House On Telegraph Hill is both the title of this film and the goal of refugee Valentina Cortese. As a survivor from a concentration camp she wants out of Europe and life in America. So she takes the identity of a friend who died there who happened to be Polish nobility and who married into a wealthy American family from San Francisco. When she arrives in America who is to greet her but a cousin-in-law and guardian to her 'son' Gordon Gebbert. Richard Basehart is in that role and after some hesitation puts the moves on Cortese and they marry. That should cinch her citizenship in America. Things don't seem right for Cortese and not just the fact she's not who she says she is. There's a housekeeper played by Fay Baker who takes an intense dislike to her and also the fact that she's obsessed with Gebbert almost regarding him as her own. Basehart starts acting strange as well. Her only friend is William Lundigan who was a major in the army and whom she dealt with coincidentally, a little too coincidentally for my taste in the displaced persons camp after World War II.That and the fact that an incredibly stupid error on one of the protagonists parts trips up the scheme are what bars The House On Telegraph Hill. Making up for that are good performances from Cortese and Basehart who overcome story and script deficiencies. The film did get an Oscar nomination for Black and White Art&Set Direction and that is the film's other asset.The film seems to have been earmarked for Ingrid Bergman, but she was in Italian exile when The House On Telegraph Hill was being made. In any event it was a gain for Valentina Cortese who made the most of a performance in this film.

Victoria (Valentina Cortese) is a Polish concentration camp inmate when the film begins. She is friends with Karin, though it seems likely Karin will not survive the camp. And, when the war ends and Karin is dead, impulsively Victoria assumes Karin's identity. After all, Karin has a relative and child in the US and Victoria is all alone. However, moving into her friend's life isn't as easy as she suspects. While they do accept her as Karin, things have happened behind the scenes and soon Karin/Victoria thinks someone is out to kill her. But who and why? I could say more, but as this is a mystery film, I will not spoil the surprises. This is a decent movie but has a few problems. The most obvious is that once the leading lady realizes there is a problem in the house, she behaves so stupidly. First, she acts totally high-strung and hides her feelings so poorly. Second, you'd think that given her fears, she'd just get the heck out of the house! In fact, that's a problem with a lot of films--when the leading character is afraid for their life but don't just runaway to avoid being killed. Duh. This just wasn't handled very well. However, despite this, the film does have an interesting plot, it maintains a nice creepy atmosphere, it ends well and the actors all were quite good. By the way, get a load of the car wreck. It was amazingly unconvincing-especially when the intended victim just got up and walked away after being thrown from the crashing car. Again, duh.

The interesting American career of Italian actress Valentina Cortese met a high point here, in one of her best known films. The next year, she gave an even better performance in SECRET PEOPLE (1952, see my review), but here she is also excellent. Here she plays a Polish woman (whereas in SECRET PEOPLE she is Italian), presumably based upon the theory that one foreign accent sounds like any other to the Americans, and with those exquisitely sensitive eyes she might as well be Polish, indeed from anywhere she says, because we believe her. The story commences in the grim surroundings of Belsen, where she and a woman friend are imprisoned by the Nazis. Her friend dies three days before the American liberators arrive, and Valentina assumes her identity because at least the friend has a son in America, while she has no one and nothing left, and anyway she speaks English with an Italian accent so that's OK then. This eventually leads her as a displaced person to New York, where she meets an intimidating lawyer and the sinister Richard Basehart, who is guardian of 'her' young son, who is named Chris and lives in a big mansion on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. The American Major who interrogated Valentina at Belsen turns up at a party, as American Majors do in films, especially when they are played by handsome and reliable William Lundigan, and she turns to him for help because she is becoming worried by Richard Basehart, who married her as soon as he saw her in New York, and she soon realizes it was really to secure his position in control of the large family fortune. Yes, the story is pretty far-fetched. Robert Wise does his usual superior job of directing, but this script needs more than that. Despite the fact that this film is largely set on Telegraph Hill, it is not one of those hills which is alive with the sound of music. There is a playhouse at the bottom of the garden with a big hole in the floor through which one can fall 300 feet to one's death. It has been sitting there like that for four years 'since the explosion'. For such a large and carefully-kept mansion with a Chinese butler, there is a distinct shortage of maintenance in the garden despite its impeccably cut lawn! Naturally, Valentina falls down the hole when she is cornered there by Basehart, but he grabs her hands and saves her from death. But that is only a temporary respite, for there is the poisoned orange juice to come. Oh, but between those two events, there is the brake fluid drained from the car. And you know how steep those San Francisco hills are without brake fluid. She is saved by a pile of construction sand onto which she lands when the car crashes and she is thrown out. Everything about this story is perfectly natural and happens every day. Valentina loves 'the feel of silk on my skin again' after her sufferings at Belsen, and she has a very sweet nature, but there is a creepy woman named Margaret in the house (played by the eerily forbidding Fay Baker) who is very possessive of the little boy Chris, whose only interest appears to be baseball and is played by a child actor named Gordon Gebert who has a rather annoying voice and is badly handled on screen. Robert Wise had clearly not learned the art of directing children yet. The tension mounts as we slowly climb the Telegraph Hill of this story, and the tale becomes increasingly Gothic and less and less convincing. Will Valentina, who survived Belsen, also be able to survive Basehart's machinations to do her in and have the money to himself? It is very much touch and go and I ain't sayin'.