Woman In White, The

As painter Walter Hartright (Gig Young) walks through the wooded dark night to Limmeridge House, she arrives like a heavenly apparition: The Woman in White, the title character of Wilkie Collins' pioneering 1859 mystery novel, well-embodied in this eerily effective, lushly atmospheric screen adaptation by lovely Eleanor Parker. She is the key figure (actually figures, playing dual roles) in a tale of murder, insanity, switched identities and dastardly plots encircling an inheritance, while Hartright and family cousin Marian (Alexis Smith) sleuth out the motivations of the estate's odd, sinister characters. Director Peter Godfrey (Christmas in Connecticut, The Two Mrs. Carrolls) marshals studio forces of top-tier production and costume design, a lyrical Max Steiner score and a rogues' gallery of juicy turns by John Abbott as the hypochondriac family scion, John Emery as a scheming nobleman, Agnes Moorehead as a long-suffering wife and, supremely, Sydney Greenstreet as evil bon vivant Count Fosco, to craft a silkily stylish and hugely gripping thriller.

• drama