The Woman in White

“I will wear white as long as I live.” In Peter Godfrey’s Gothic noir The Woman in White, based on the suspense novel by Dickens contemporary Wilkie Collins, Gig Young plays drawing master Walter Hartright, who arrives at Limeridge House to teach the beautiful, orphaned Laura Fairlie (Eleanor Parker); already engaged to Sir Percival Glyde (John Emery), Laura, not surprisingly, develops an attraction to her new teacher. When Hartright encounters a ghost-like Laura lookalike in the woods near the house, he unwittingly stumbles into a household secret involving frauds, fortunes, and insane asylums. The performances are excellent, especially John Abbott as the frail, exasperated patriarch Frederick Fairlie and Agnes Moorhead as the tough, righteous Countess Fosco. The art direction and cinematography create a gorgeous Victorian palette against which the mystery unfolds: secret passages, candlelit cellars, flowing silhouettes, even a Victorian fist fight in the dark!