After a two-year filmmaking hiatus, Lang emerged at B-film factory Republic Pictures with this entertainingly myopic tale of a pompous writer turned conniving murderer. The ever-charming and always sleazy Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) might have a high-society wife and a high-society waterfront house, but he seems more fascinated by the curves of the maid than of the river. When a forceful seduction ends in "accidental" strangulation, he uses the murder as material for his new novel. Signing copies for adoring fans in the afternoon, dancing jigs with society swells in the evening, but nervously looking for the maid's floating body at midnight, poor Stephen soon realizes that one murder may unfortunately not be enough to guarantee his success. Acclaimed by Bertrand Tavernier for its "harrowing romanticism," House exists in a hermetically sealed world of claustrophobic interiors and its characters' stifling pettiness, with image and tone so black it gleefully denies any hint of light.-Jason Sanders