Dark Waters (1944 film)


Dark Waters is a 1944 Gothic film noir based on the novel of the same name by Francis and Marian Cockrell. It was directed by Andre DeToth and starred Merle Oberon, Franchot Tone and Thomas Mitchell.

Plot

Leslie Calvin, the shaken survivor of a ship sunk by a submarine, travels to her aunt and uncle's Louisiana plantation to recuperate, but her relatives have other ideas. Thomas Mitchell, who played the congenial Gerald O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, is a mysterious and fussy guest at the plantation. In a subtle nod to Gone With the Wind, the aunt tells Leslie that "Tomorrow is another day."

Cast

Critical response

Slant Magazine's film critic, Glenn Heath Jr., liked the film writing, "Mood dictates narrative in Andre de Toth's Dark Waters, a hallucinatory jigsaw puzzle set in the deep swamps of 1940s Louisiana that becomes a perfect breeding ground for noirish shadows and deceptive wordplay... Dark Waters ends with multiple dead bodies sinking into the bayou and Leslie directly confronting what one character calls her "persuasion complex." The bravura finale through the oozing locale is a stunner, and despite some surface romance that feels a bit forced, the film stays true to its mystically dark mood, a slithering distant cousin to Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie.