House on Telegraph Hill

Suspenseful films rely upon the old bait-and-switch plot twist, but House on Telegraph Hill takes it a step too far. We begin the film with the story of a woman who has survived the Nazi concentration camps, stolen a woman’s identity and discovers that she’s the “heir” to a sizable fortune and the guardian of a young child. The material is rich and textured, will this woman so desperate to survive get away with this grand deception? But Telegraph Hill does a weird about-face about halfway through. No sooner has she begun to settle down into her new life then the movie becomes a movie about someone trying to kill her and the child to inherent the fortune. This twenty minute (or so) set-up is quickly written off to just give her character a secret that she needs to protect whenever the film feels like going back to that plot point.

But Telegraph Hill still has a few big pluses going for it. The central performance by Valentina Cortese handles the twists and turns and makes it all seem believable. Her grounded performance sells the material for all of its lurid and ridiculous turns. It’s a hell of a performance, as close to literally watching an actor spin straw into gold as one can get. Robert Wise, no stranger to these B-movie productions in his early directing days, can create tense and exciting sequences. A particularly appealing one involves a car with brakes that have been cut and Cortese trying to steer it to a safe stop while violently navigating the looping roads in San Francisco. There’s no covering the pot holes in the narrative, but Wise and company do their best to drive this baby home to a fine finish.