Dark Waters (1944 film)

90 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishBudget$800,000^[1]

Dark Waters is a 1944 American Gothic film noir based on the novel of the same name by Francis and Marian Cockrell. It was directed by Andre de Toth and starred Merle Oberon, Franchot Tone, and Thomas Mitchell.^[2]

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, whom she has never met, have other ideas. She is befriended by a young local doctor, George Grover.

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."

The film was generally well received as accomplishing what it intended, with the New York Times stating it was "neatly produced and directed – and well played by an excellent cast."^[3]

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.^[4]

• List of American films of 1944

• Dark Waters at IMDb
• Dark Waters at AllMovie
• Dark Waters at the TCM Movie Database
• Dark Waters informational page and DVD review at DVD Beaver (includes images)
• Dark Waters film at Hulu (free and complete)