Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

silent movie. As spectators, we feel divided and unable to reconcile two contradictory
perspectives offered to us simultaneously: Helen’s muteness is then the metaphor which
accompanies that of the film at the hotel (silent movie, just images) and that of the girl
upstairs being killed (she is kept silent, just her arms are frenetically moving). The happy
images from the film The Kiss are intercut with those agonising ones from the scene in the
room upstairs. Narrative certainty is thus destabilised and so is our position as viewers.
With its expressionistic aesthetics, this particular opening scene lacks the narrative
organising principles of time, space and causality and further accentuates the narrative
ambiguity or for that matter its claim to represent any degree of objective reality.
The old creepy and dark Warren mansion is the space where virtually the entire
film takes place. In the Gothic novel, the action usually takes place in an apparently
abandoned great house or castle which normally provides an atmosphere of mystery and
suspense. Through secret passages, secret rooms, and dark and hidden staircases, the castle
of the Gothic novel is usually substituted by the mansion or “the old dark house” in film,
where unusual camerawork with bizarre angles, continued close-ups, and darkness and
shadows contribute to the same feeling of claustrophobia and entrapment. In The Spiral
Staircase, the action occurs in a big Victorian house, the décor of which is designed to
emphasise the role of repression and emotional disturbance in the characters. Film
historian Christopher Justice writes:
The setting of the mansion in The Spiral Staircase is full of Victorian ornaments that
suggest a longing for not only the chronological past, but for something sensed but
not altogether identifiable. Siodmak’s use of deep-focus also reveals his tribute to
Orson Welles and Citizen Kane, the high priest of that directorial brotherhood.
Siodmak clearly used Kane’s influence to embellish his own films, and like most
good directors during that era, did so in a creative manner (…). (Justice 2003)
The “chronological past” is an important element in the Gothic novel, though one
could argue that the past here is used more atmospherically (since there is little reference
beyond a nuclear family history), as it emphasises the feeling of the unknown and adds
horror and mystery to the whole context. In this film, the setting of the ornamented
mansion suggests indeed “a longing for (...) something sensed but not altogether
identifiable”. The Warren family home is also inhabited by Steven, Ms Warren’s
obnoxious grown up son, who has just returned from Paris. Yet, as viewers, we are told
little about his past, or even about his bookish half-brother biology professor Albert
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