Rent House of Strangers (1949)

Family Melodrama. - House of Strangers review by Steve

Cumbersome dynasty saga which is a critics favourite but too weighted down by the laborious script. It's about the adaptation of a family of poor Sicilian immigrants to New York who achieve wealth but struggle to cast off the old ways. Like The Godfather. And it's a generational story about a patriarch who destroys his legacy by refusing to change.

To keep control, he sets his four sons against each other. Edward G. Robinson plays the father who grew up in poverty but made a fortune establishing a neighbourhood bank with idiosyncratic book keeping methods. After the 1933 banking act, the whole lot comes crashing down and his boys fight to take charge of the remains.

All the sons are like the father in different ways. His favourite is Richard Conte, a lawyer of dubious probity. There is much of the old country in all of them and insinuations of the mafia. The problem is the narrative focuses too little on the family's internecine power struggle and too much on Conte's on-off relationship with Susan Hayward.

She's always worth watching, but her role is inflated. There is lavish set decor and artistic noir photography, but the story lacks impetus. When a powerful climax looms into view, it is fluffed. Maybe due to the production code. It was remade as Broken Lance in 1954, and the themes of heritage and revenge work much better as a western.