HE STRANGE AFFAIR OF UNCLE HARRY is another interesting Siodmak, his second collaboration with producer Joan Harrison, not as successful as PHANTOM LADY. Still, it’s a fascinating film, influenced by MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, bordering on the Gothic, tinged with perversity and marred by a duplicitous ending no one is meant to believe. Milquetoasty George Sanders lives with two sisters in the vast house that is all the remains of the family fortune. Ella Raines appears in town and threatens the homely menage. Will George choose his sisters or his lover? Geraldine Fitzgerald is entertainingly chilling as George Sanders’ possessive sister; Angela Lansbury’s mother, Moyna MacGill, is the other sister, well-meaning and adorably flighty. A roving camera and superb mise-en-scène. A film that seems less than the sum of its parts but that nonetheless lingers in the mind the way other, more seamless films, don’t. Travis Banton designed the outfits.
