House on Telegraph Hill
                        
Director: Robert Wise
Year:  1951
Rating: 7.0
This is a solid if not inspired entry into the Am I Crazy or Is Someone trying to Kill Me genre - sort of a minor Rebecca even with the crazy scary governess. A moody old house in San Francisco, eerie music, a huge portrait of the dead owner and a group of people who are all unethical to different degrees. The viewer is put into the odd moral judgmental position of being on the side of a woman who had taken on another's identity in order to have the fine trappings of life. Then accidents occur, she begins to love the boy who she pretends to be the mother of - no one here has clean hands - not even the genial lawyer who seems to have no problem overlooking a clear deception and crime. A film like this tends to have a number of twists and turns and perhaps the main twist here is that there really isn't one.



Directed by the great Robert Wise who has a few classics on his resume - such as The Day the Earth Stood Still from the very same year. Later he was to do another spooky film much better - The Haunting in 1963. Throw in West Side Story, The Desert Rats, Run Silent Run Deep, The Sound of Music, Sand Pebbles and even the first Star Trek film and you have a classic old fashioned studio director who could direct any kind of film well but perhaps had no personal vision.