by Victoria Lucas

Now here's a word you don't see every day:  "evert." It's used in biology or surgery to mean turning something inside out.  

That's what the movie by director Julien Duvivier, “inspired by John Dickson Carr's novel, The Burning Court,” did to the book.   

No one ever accused Carr of being less than ingenious, and the movie is ingenious too,  changing the topography of the book so thoroughly that it can only be compared to peeling off a glove by starting at the arms and pulling it back over the fingers.
 
If you read my review of the book (and radio program) you might remember that I asked, "Can a detective story have elements of the supernatural?  Can a mystery also be horror fiction?" The answer, for the movie, is still "yes," but instead of being a horror tale that shadows, overtakes, and finally transforms a detective story as in the book, it is a detective story that dispels the supernatural elements and turns the whole thing back into a murder mystery ending in a police inspector's office.
 
What is a 'burning court'?   It was a secret group that met to try those accused of criminal acts; the guilty were punished by burning.  
 
The relevance of the burning court is briefly described in a scrolling text near the beginning of the film:   an ancestor of Marie d'Aubray, a main character in the book and film, was "burnt at the stake" for witchcraft and poisoning "after having had her head cut off."   After declaring that d'Aubray cursed her betrayer and his descendants, the scroll ends with "The following tells the story of that curse."
 

 
This is a truly international film made with French and Austrian actors and both French and Italian production companies, on location in Hesse, Germany, based on a novel written by an American writer who lived in England for much of his life and adopted the British style of detective novels, instead of the French style evident in the movie.  The French style of murder mysteries includes the disclosure of whodunnit early in the narrative, and that is what happens in the movie.
 
Instead of opening as the novel does in a Philadelphia commuter train, which makes succeeding elements of horror that much more unexpected, the movie is set in a stereotypical venue of horror films, a castle in the Black Forest.
 

The castle setting
 
The characters are altered to fit the new locale and also to fit the new topography by Duvivier and scenarist Charles Spaak.  Instead of Edward Stevens, the plodding neighbor of the Despard family (the Desgrezs in the movie) and husband of the less restrained Marie D'Aubray, there is the writer Michel Boissand.  D'Aubray's name and her position as the descendant (or ?) of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, a famous poisoner, does not change. Her character develops during the film (not the novel), and Nurse Corbett (Schneider in the movie) reveals her true self more and more throughout the film, again different from the book.  Whereas Stevens is an editor at a Philadelphia publishing company, Boissand is a freelance writer come to interview Desgrez, who was already dead at the beginning of the novel, there named Miles Despard. Desgrez's two nephews remain, and remain at odds, but the niece is eliminated. So is the writer Gaudan Cross, who provided the first element of horror in the book, with only a few bits of his contributions given to Boissand.  Cross also provides the second body in the book, which in the film changes sex and manner of death.
 

Marie D'Aubray
 
The changed nature of Stevens/Boissand/Cross is handy because Boissand can do exposition in the film that would be more awkward for other characters, although D'Aubray's distress, the curiosity of the elder Desgrez, and a doctor with a revoked license (Partington in the novel, Hermann in the movie) provide excuses for revealing some things about the relationship of D'Aubray's and Desgrez's ancestors.  
 
Further signs of “eversion”: although certain elements of horror were added (a ride through and setting in the Black Forest, to start with), others were subtracted.   For instance, the story of the housekeeper about seeing a woman in 17th-century costume give Desgrez his poisoned drink and then disappear through a wall is kept and made a plot element, the most horrific part of the description in the book was discarded:  "The idea was that the woman's neck might not have been completely fastened on." A mysterious silver cup and a dead cat are also cut from the narrative.
 
The changes make sense if, whereas the novel is a detective story shot through with elements of horror, the movie is a horror tale shot through with elements of a detective story.  Once the movie scene is set for horror, it is increasingly degraded into an ordinary murder mystery, while the book added elements of the supernatural. But at the very end of both the book and the movie, a little stroke of horror enters to leave a question in the mind, just as, whether removing or donning gloves, the fingertips are the last to touch the gloves.  At the end of the movie, it is a most ordinary character, a police inspector, who adds his own element of gothic horror.
 

Police Inspector with Skull
 
There are some interesting cultural features of the movie versus the novel.  One is the fact that Partington, a friend of Mark's, is clearly identified in the book as a doctor who has been driven from his practice by having performed an abortion.  In the movie Dr. Hermann (a friend of Mathias Desgrez) says that he took pity on a young pregnant girl who would have otherwise drowned herself. This narrative is clearly meant to show the doctor in a more favorable light, but it also avoids the word "abortion," the procedure, and the social/religious controversy over it.  The former doctor does requite himself better in the movie than in the book, though with a German accent and a preference for psychoanalysis.
 

Dr. Hermann  
 
And then there is Mark's brother Ogden Despard/Stephane Desgrez.  In the book Ogden is a brooding, sardonic presence who is beaten up by Mark.  In the movie Stephane (a unisex name) is a more sympathetic character; and he gives signs of being a homosexual.  A masked ball occupies most characters the night of the first murder, providing some alibis. Stephane attends the ball in a dress that he also uses with a mask to gain admittance to his uncle's unwilling presence to ask for money.   He is practically disowned by his uncle, who dislikes him, and in the movie Marc refers to "the life you've been leading" as the reason for the dislike.
 

Marc, Stephane, and Lucie  
 
A strangely modern feature of the new topography is the body of Nadja Tiller, who plays Nurse Schneider in the film.  She is an Austrian celebrity whose increased role is congruent with her stardom. As is usual with female film stars, Tiller is a beautiful young woman, and the film shows her off to an extent one doesn't expect in a horror film (unless a monster is about to eat or kidnap her).  Marc's relationship with her in the movie (not the book) provides opportunities to see her in her underwear.
 

Nurse Schneider  
 
Other bizarre features that show up in the movie but not in the novel:  the funeral for the elder Desgrez, which he has decreed should be in the great hall of his castle (actually Castle Hohenbuchau in Hessen, Germany), with an open coffin and a sextet, which apparently (the instrumentation is too full for a small group) plays a Strauss waltz for everyone to dance.  A band playing Sousa follows the funeral procession to the mausoleum, through the gate of which Mathias is later seen seated on a chair.
 

Mrs. Henderson, Marc, Stephane, and Mathias laid out
 
Stephane's impatience with Boissand's speed in front of him, while he himself drives a customer's Porsche on a narrow, winding mountain road, is a bit of strange character revelation of Boissand's odd sense of humor, D'Aubray's passivity, and Stephane's over-the-top personality.
 
The roles of both D'Aubray and Dr. Hermann are much enhanced in the movie, and much changed.  The change is typified by a scene in which Dr. Hermann points out to D'Aubray after Desgrez's death that this time (under the curse), here she is alive and Desgrez is dead instead of the other way around, when her ancestor was executed.  D'Aubray is quite upset by this, says, "Why do you hurt me?" and runs away, emphasizing the difference between the D'Aubray of the book (self-assured, mostly uninvolved, coming into her own at the end) and the timid, pale woman of the movie who is subordinate to her husband and relies on Dr. Hermann to help her.
 

A view of a courtyard in the Schloss
 
Like the book, though, the movie defies classification.  Director Duvivier is best known for "Pepe le Moko," which came out in 1937, the same year as Carr's novel.  For both of them, that year was the heyday of their work. I repeat the recommendation I have seen before and made in my review of the book: don't see the movie first because it may spoil the much more detailed and structured book for you.  I would give both the movie and the book 4 out of 5 for ingenuity and hope you find an opportunity to enjoy them.