Dragonwyck (film)
Dragonwyck is a 1946 American period drama film made by Twentieth Century-Fox. It was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and Ernst Lubitsch (uncredited), from a screenplay by Mankiewicz, based on the novel Dragonwyck by Anya Seton. The music score was by Alfred Newman, and the cinematography by Arthur C. Miller. The film stars Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, and Vincent Price. Plot summary Raised in 1844 Greenwich, Connecticut by her strait-laced low church parents, Ephraim (Walter Huston) and Abigail (Anne Revere), Miranda Wells (Gene Tierney) is a farm girl who often daydreams of a more romantic and luxurious life outside the farm. Miranda gets her opportunity when her mother receives a letter from their distant cousin Nicholas Van Ryn (Vincent Price), a wealthy patroon in Hudson, New York. Miranda manages to convince her parents to let her go to Nicholas's estate of Dragonwyck manor as companion to his eight-year-old daughter Katrine (Connie Marshall). Over time, Miranda learns that Nicholas and his wife Johanna are estranged from each other and from their daughter. She also hears from the servants that the Van Ryn bloodline is cursed as only they can hear the harpsichord played by the ghost of Nicholas's great-grandmother Azilde whenever misfortune befalls the family. Meeting an Anti-Rent supporter named Dr. Jeff Turner while secretly attending the tenant farmers' Kermesse with Katrine, Miranda witnesses Nicholas evicting a discontented farmer named Klaas Bleecker for refusing to participate in the annual rent-paying ceremony. A few days later, Klaas is accused of murder. Nicholas ungraciously assents to Turner's request that the farmer be given a fair trial, in return for which he insists the doctor attend to his ailing wife Johanna. Although Johanna is diagnosed with a simple cold, she dies unexpectedly of acute gastritis from eating cake. Nicholas later confesses to Miranda that he was unhappy with his wife for not bearing him a son after being rendered infertile by the birth of Katrine. At the same time, he admits having romantic feelings for Miranda. Miranda returns the sentiment, but returns to Greenwich to put some distance between them. Two months later, Nicholas arrives and asks for her hand in marriage. Ephraim and Abigail reluctantly consent, and Miranda becomes pregnant not long after the wedding. Nicholas is thrilled by the news, though he quarrels with her over her simple faith in a God as the semi-feudal system of patroon land ownership and tenancy crumbled around him. However, when their baby is revealed to have a defective heart and dies immediately after his baptism, a heartbroken and embittered Nicholas withdraws alone to an attic room at Dragonwyck and becomes a drug addict. Peg O'Malley, Miranda's semi-lame loyal maid, fears for Miranda's life and calls upon Dr. Jeff Turner for help. Turner arrives as Nicholas is suffering a psychotic episode characterized by auditory hallucinations and realizes that Johanna's death was not an accident; Nicholas poisoned Johanna with a sprig from an Oleander bush he'd sprinkled in her food. Turner