‘The Spiral Staircase’ or — If Orson Welles Had Directed a Giallo?
I’d always assumed Robert Siodmak’s ‘The Spiral Staircase’ (1946) was film noir… but it’s nothing like that at all. In fact, it’s about as far from noir as you can get: there’s no cynical detective; no fast-talking, hard-talking dame (indeed, the dame here can’t even speak); nobody smokes; there’s nothing hard-boiled about any of this in the slightest. So what is ‘The Spiral Staircase’, then? I was curious, and excited, to find out.
The movie begins with young, mute Helen watching a silent movie (this acclimatises us to the fact that a lot of what we’ll be seeing will be played out wordlessly) when a woman is brutally murdered in the flat above the cinema by a stranger hiding in her closet. We immediately discover this is the latest in a series of murders all aimed at young women with some form of disability. Concerned, Helen returns home to the sprawling mansion where she works for the bedridden Mrs Warren as a live-in companion yet, as she does so, a figure in a trench coat and wearing leather gloves voyeuristically watches from the woods with seemingly evil inten…
Hang on — so we have defenseless women being brutally murdered by a gloved serial-killer and where themes of voyeurism are emphasised by POV camera-work all wrapped up in a Hitchcockian plot? This isn’t film noir; this is a Giallo!
Yep, as even with all the trappings of Gothic psychological horror (which is what ‘The Spiral Staircase’ essentially is) and similarities to everything from ‘The Old, Dark House’ (1932) to ‘The Haunting’ (1963) the over-riding sensation is often of watching a Mario Bava, or even at times an Argento (a strange house overseen by a fearsome matriarch where young women are being stalked and bumped-off), movie if it was made in the forties. Combine that with some incredible depth of field, black and white cinematography and the result feels like a Giallo if it had been directed by Orson Welles — if ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941) and ‘Blood and Black Lace’ (1964) had sex and made a baby it would look something like this. Cool!
Siodmak also brings a sly sense of humour to everything whether it’s a non-jump scare jump scare (Elsa Lanchester silently popping into frame with a broom) or when Helen is unceremoniously dumped by the side of the road by Dr Parry to the most ironic music the composer could possibly think of (yeah, she’s going to be just fine, folks). Again, this gives the film a similar feeling to some of James Whale’s work and where everything is going to be turned up to the max.
My only slight niggle was that with Helen being unable to speak due to childhood trauma means that for a lot of the time we are introduced to a series of characters who have to do all the talking for both of them. It’s not a bad thing but it leads to a predictable rhythm on occasion. There’s also a slight fuzziness and ambiguity as to where all this might be heading or what it all might be about but this adds to the sense of mystery hanging over everything.
‘The Spiral Staircase’ is a great film. It feels like a delightful mash-up of horror, Hitchcock and more and must have been hugely influential. It’s deftly directed by Siodmak, even more impressively shot by Nicholas Musuraca and filled with excellent performances by the cast. I was expecting to enjoy ‘The Spiral Staircase’ but I was not expecting a movie to be such a strong progenitor to the Giallo genre. That watching, unblinking, voyeuristic eye has exerted a strong and murderous influence indeed.
