Programme notes CH 03 — The Haunted Screen
The Cat and the Canary
Twenty years after a rich man’s death, his relatives gather at midnight in his house to hear who gets the money.
The old dark house begins here: secret panels, a clawed hand out of the wall, heirs locked in with a lunatic loose on the grounds, and a will read at midnight. Paul Leni came to Universal from Berlin, where he designed sets before he directed. He shoots the West mansion as a corridor of blowing curtains, with the camera running down it like a draught. Laura La Plante plays the heiress who must be judged sane to inherit, and the film sets out to test her. Watch the opening titles: a gloved hand wipes away cobwebs to reveal the credits, which tells you this is going to be fun. Universal built its horror cycle on this film.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Paul Leni
- Photographed by
- Gilbert Warrenton
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Universal’s two silent nights of 1925–27, both made under Carl Laemmle before Dracula. Leni builds his dread out of a house and Julian builds his out of a face, and the studio’s horror of the 1930s needed both.
Two Broadway mysteries that Universal and United Artists turned into old dark house pictures. Leni's camera drifts down corridors of blowing curtains, and West's swoops through a city of miniatures to reach the house. In both, the house is the star.