There is one cinema gimmick that always works for me and can sometimes lift a movie out of the ordinary and take it somewhere unexpected. This usually occurs when someone either puts on a mask or appears in one. The simple act of doing this immediately brings something theatrical and visually arresting to the scene that taps into our subconscious on an almost primeval level.
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A relic from an earlier era when gothic Victorian melodramas were all the rage, Uncle Silas (1947, released in the U.S. as The Inheritance) is an adaptation of Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel which was actually an elaboration of his 1851 short story, “A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess.” As you can surmise from the title, Le Fanu’s story was an earlier form of the Harlequin romance genre, steeped in an atmosphere of old dark houses, decadent aristocrats and mysterious locked rooms. Le Fanu is best known for his vampire novella, Camilla, which has enjoyed numerous film adaptations, but Uncle Silas (published in 1864) was a popular page-turner for its era.
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Cinema Sojourns 