For me, the most interesting thing about The Uninvited is the fact that no one in it is married. Commander Beech (Donald Crisp), at one time was an exception to this rule, but his wife passed away and he never remarried. Everyone else, apart from the 20-year-old Gail (Gail Russell), is well past the age at which heterosexual, god-fearing Brits were expected to marry (and she's getting there — at least in the United States, within a few years, the average age for a woman entering into marriage was 19). And yet, there are no issues. No dark talk about those odd Fitzgerald siblings (Ray Milland as Rick, and Ruth Hussey as Pamela) and why they live together, and what it might mean. No questions about the reliability — and/or political leanings — of the determinedly single Dr. Scott (Alan Napier), who is instead a respected friend and physician to those in his community. And, even more remarkably, no whispers about Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner), the severe, single woman with a portrait of a woman for whom she once worked, hanging in a place of honor about her fireplace.Everything, at least in terms of matrimony, and the expectations set forth in mainstream, English-speak cinema for at least 20 years in the wake of the Production Code, seems to be upside down. Not only are good, honest, amusing people single and thriving, but all of the problems within the film stem from marriage, and the infidelity that sometimes accompanies it. The two ghosts — sources of trauma and terror to our protagonists — are of women who were bound together by an unhappy marriage: the jilted wife and the hidden lover, both so discontented and unheard in life that they have been compelled to hang around, and try to correct these slights in death.It's fascinating that the banishing of the ghostly remnants of a broken marriage is accompanied by the cheerful promise of two more, enveloping all four of the film's marrying-age leads (well, the ones who aren't lesbians) in the most socially acceptable of institutions. One wonders if, perhaps, there's a dark suggestion here, an implication that they've not learned the lesson the events of the film ought to have taught — and that future generations will one day be tasked with banishing their unhappy ghosts from a beautiful, mysteriously empty home.
