House by the River (1950)

House by the River may not belong to Fritz Lang's best work, but the ghoulish and secretive sets and the lighting alone make the film, a non-suspense thriller, worth watching. The sets consist of a gruesome-looking river (in which all kinds of gory stuff float by) and a spooky, windling house. It is as if also every tree and rock are immersed in the human tragedy; everything is sinister-looking. This is a film in which the crime is known to the viewer. We know whodunnit and why. So how on earth does the plot move onwards? Well - the story is this: a swinish man spies on the maid of the house, who is walking down the stairs. The man appears from the shadows, attempting to seduce the woman. She screams - he strangles. The man makes his kind but timid brother an accomplice in the crime by talking him - half forcing him to - dump her body into the river. Soon enough, the crime is revealed, the question is just on whom the blame will be placed. The moral question is whether the brother will rat or whether he will keep his mouth shut. Will the brother reveal himself, or will he go further into darkness? As a tale about moral responsibility - well, I wasn't completely convinced but it is of course interesting to think about what the brother becomes when meekly helping the killer. The funniest part of the film is the choice to make the killer an author - an author with writer's block; an author in desperate need of a good story with which a book can be sold. So - one can perhaps interpret the film as poking fun at the degradation of art into sensationalism amd publicity-hunting.