Silver Screen Standards: The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

Set in its own modern day in the wake of World War II, The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) merges elements of the female Gothic and film noir to present a gripping story about survival, deception, and maternal devotion with a rich subtext for viewers to ponder after the final scene closes. It’s not as celebrated as other noir pictures directed by Robert Wise, like Born to Kill (1947) and The Set-Up (1949), but it reflects his ability to handle psychologically complex women’s narratives just as much as his work on The Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Haunting (1963). The endangered heroine in the titular house is, however, made of stronger stuff than Hill House’s fragile Eleanor, having already survived the horrors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the war. With its subtle treatment of trauma, its shifting loyalties, and its moral complexity, The House on Telegraph Hill suggests far more than it tells, making it a movie you need to watch at least twice to appreciate its many layers.

Italian actress Valentina Cortese stars as Polish heroine Victoria Kowelska, who assumes the identity of her dead friend, Karin (Natasha Lytess), in the hope of reaching America and Karin’s young son, Christopher (Gordon Gebert). After many obstacles, Victoria, now living as Karin, meets and marries the boy’s legal guardian, Alan Spender (Richard Basehart), and Victoria moves into the stately San Francisco home that previously belonged to Karin’s wealthy aunt. Nobody remembers the real Karin to reveal Victoria’s deception, but her conscience troubles her deeply, as does her attraction to handsome Marc Bennett (William Lundigan), an American Army Major at Belsen during the camp’s liberation and also a friend of Alan’s family in San Francisco. Victoria soon discovers that everyone on Telegraph Hill has secrets, including her relentlessly attentive husband and the boy’s caretaker, Margaret (Fay Baker), but some secrets are deadlier than others.

We often hear the commonplace assertion that war changes people, but The House on Telegraph Hill makes the change literal rather than metamorphic by having Victoria abandon her old identity entirely in order to step into the life Karin might have pursued if she had survived. It isn’t really necessary to the plot for Victoria to be an imposter because Alan’s actions are unrelated to her deception, but the extra layer of identity reminds us of the differences between the original Karin and her replacement. When we see the real Karin in the Nazi camp, she yearns for her son but is hopeless, passive, and unable to fight for survival even for his sake. Victoria, however, fights for both of them, stealing food and medicine for Karin, encouraging her to eat, and protecting her from the other desperate prisoners. As her name suggests, Victoria will never admit defeat, and she is determined enough to reach America despite years of setbacks. While she appears to settle into the pretty clothes and domestic routines of her American post-war life, Victoria never loses her survivor’s instinct for danger, and she doesn’t let Alan’s pleasant manner or Marc’s doubts seduce her into a false sense of safety. Here is a heroine who cannot be gaslit because her sense of self-preservation has been sharpened by years of constant use. Karin was a victim, but Victoria prevails, which ironically makes her a better mother to Christopher, who needs as much fierce maternal protection as he can get.

Wartime experience and duality reverberate through other aspects of the story, as well. Victoria briefly reveals her home and life before the war; she had a husband and a beautiful estate before the Nazis took everything. We see her first as a starving, unwashed prisoner and later in beautiful gowns with food always around her. The scene of casual abundance at the grocery store contrasts with the opening when Victoria fights for a meager bowl of broth to feed her friend. Glasses of orange juice – symbolic of sunny California life – seem celebratory at first but later turn sinister. Marc first appears as an American Army officer trying to sort out the human wreckage of Bergen-Belsen; later he re-enters Victoria’s life as a wealthy civilian lawyer. Marc provides an alternative to Alan and is also the object of Alan’s envy because of his family’s greater wealth, and it’s noteworthy that no mention is made of Alan having served in the war as Marc did. When Victoria eventually confesses her deception to Marc, their shared knowledge of the concentration camp makes him sympathetic. He knows what she endured there and why she might gamble on a new life and identity. Victoria doubles for Karin, but so does Margaret, who has raised Karin’s son and protected him for years, and the tense relationship between Victoria and Margaret is much more about Chris than Alan. In a later decade the story of Victoria and Margaret might have ended with more resolution about their ultimately common goal, but the best we get in 1951 is an open ending that suggests some tantalizing possibilities.

Richard Basehart and Valentina Cortese must have enjoyed good chemistry offscreen in spite of their characters’ conflict; they married in 1951 and remained together until 1960, and their son, Jackie Basehart, also became an actor. For more of Cortese’s film career, see Thieves’ Highway (1949), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), and Day for Night (1973). Basehart also stars in He Walked by Night (1948), Tension (1949), La Strada (1954), and Moby Dick (1956). Fay Baker, who gets her best scenes at the very end of The House on Telegraph Hill, turns up in Notorious (1946), Double Deal (1950), and Deadline – U.S.A. (1952), but she also made many television appearances and wrote novels under the pen name Beth Holmes.

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— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub

Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.

Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.