The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

hyped garbage

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The acting in this movie is really good.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

(Flash Review)Sharing many similarities to Hitchcock's Suspicion as well as Notorious, this was a beautifully shot film about a woman who assumes the identity of a friend who died while they were both in a NAZI concentration camp. The deceased woman had a son who inherited a large wealth of money from a death in the family. The imposter woman plays the role of mother, believable as the true mother was away for many years, along with trustees who live in the house caring for the boy who never met the true mother. Various parties jockey for the family wealth in a manner of ways, creating much distrust and suspicion. There are many good tense moments, clues to uncover and plot surprises. Well- paced, well-edited and smart cinematography with great rich black & white film stock.

Concentration camp survivor Victoria Kowelska finds herself involved in mystery, greed, and murder when she assumes the identity of a dead friend in order to gain passage to America.Parts of the film - including the runaway car scene - were shot on location in the Telegraph Hill area of San Francisco. Long shots of the exterior of the mansion were a combination of matte paintings and studio-made facades that were erected in front of the house at 1541 Montgomery Street. This was the location of the longtime Telegraph Hill restaurant called Julius' Castle, which closed its doors in 2008 after operating for 84 years.I love San Francisco as a movie backdrop. I have never been there personally, but the city's layout, hills and so on make it a great location for shooting, far more so than Los Angeles. The brief car chase scene in this film really shows why it is hard to shoot such things anywhere else.

"House on Telegraph Hill" was nominated for Best Art & Sets Oscar, but lost out to Streetcar. It opens with Valentina Cortese in a Nazi concentration camp, and she manages to get to the states by posing as her dead friend, who just HAPPENS to be heir to a huge house and fortune in san francisco. Then the adventures begin. She wonders if someone is trying to "off" her to get to the wealth... is she right? and WHO ? Richard Basehart and Bill Lundigan are war buddies, and may or may not be involved. One is the hubby and one is hubby's best friend. Or maybe the housekeeper. Or someone else… Some great old outdoor scenes of the city. Wonder how many scenes are real and how many are backdrops. Based on the book by Dana Lyon, who lived and worked in san francisco. Directed by Robert Wise, who certainly worked on some biggies - Sound of Music, West Side Story, both of which he won for best director!

When a Polish war refugee (Valentina Cortesa) takes on a false identity to get out of a displaced person's camp after World War II ends, she gets a cushy life, but that life may be in jeopardy! You see, that new life involves the estate of a wealthy San Francisco matron, now deceased, and when Cortesa marries the guardian of her late friend's young son, she piles on the intrigue as she begins to suspect that he (Richard Basehart) and their housekeeper (Fay Baker) are trying to kill her.The house on Telegraph Hill is a spooky old San Francisco mansion that looks as if it survived the 1906 earthquake that devastated the rest of the city, but has begun to die a slow death. Cortesa may be guilty of identity theft, but her crime is minor compared to what she finds herself up against. William Lundigan plays the estate lawyer enamored of the seemingly hard as nails Cortesa, who is a nice choice being relatively unknown to American film audiences when this was made. Shots of the streets of San Francisco (especially in a scene where Cortesa's car breaks fail her) are exciting. Baker, as a more glamorous Mrs. Danvers type character, is appropriately unemotional. Basehart is both charming and non-committal, so the attitude of "Are they or aren't they?" prevails throughout.There are, of course, similarities to "Rebecca", "Gaslight" and 1950's "No Man of Her Own", but this one successfully stands up on its own.