I Watch Films: Dragonwyck

 

Dragonwyck

Miranda grows up on a farm in Connecticut, dreaming of more. Then one day her mother gets a letter from her cousin Nicholas van Rijn, Patroon of Dragonwyck, a large estate in upstate New York, asking for a companion for his daughter. This, he suggests, will be to the benefit of her education.

Though Miranda’s father is god-fearing and egalitarian and van Rijn is a decadent aristocrat he agrees. Dragonwyck is a big house, also has two hundred tenant farmers with no rights to the land; this political sub-plot weaves through the story. A young doctor is involved with the (historical) Anti-Rent movement. There’s rumoured to be a ghost in the house, a bride brought from New Orleans who cursed the family with madness, and only van Rijn’s can hear when she sings and plays.

Nicholas is estranged from his wife and Miranda feels something of a fish out of water amongst the upper class of the Hudson Valley. However Nicholas makes her feel welcome. The wife falls ill, and though the young doctor diagnoses a simple cold she dies. Miranda leaves after Nicholas admits to romantic feelings, but a few months later he pursues her to Connecticut to marry her.

This gothic romance ends in tragedy, as everything Nicholas believes in is torn down before him, not quite destroying everything else.

Watch This: A classic spooky gothic tragedy with Vincent Price and Gene Tierney
Don’t Watch This: It’s old-fashioned, slow, relies on out-moded politics and the shocking reveals aren’t very shocking to a modern audience