Awards and Honors

Ethel Barrymore was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for The Spiral Staircase.

Robert Siodmak received a citation from Cosmopolitan as Film Director of the Month for January 1946.

Critics Corner: THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE

"Director Robert Siodmak has retained a feeling for terror throughout the film by smart photography, camera angles, and sudden shifts of camera emphasis, abetted in this job by a choice performance of his cast. Film lacks the leaven of a little humor, but interest never wanes."
– Variety, January 9, 1946.

"Even though you are conscious that the tension is being built by obvious trickery, the effect is nonetheless telling. ... As a mute serving-girl in a sinister household, where family hatreds are deep and searing, Miss McGuire gives a remarkably lucid performance in pantomime. Her characterization of one who senses a dread shadow hovering over her but is incapable of communicating her fears is restrained and effectively pathetic. In this day of much talk on the screen, few actresses would dare to undertake a role which only permitted six words of speech. Miss McGuire is to be heartily commended for her adventurousness and the high degree of resourcefulness with which she has tackled the demanding and little-used art of pantomime."
– Bosley Crowther, New York Times, February 7, 1946.

"While it is a strong film with several fine Siodmakian touches––the colorful minor characters and the distorted mirror shots on the stair landing in particular––in many ways it is less a reflection of Siodmak than of David O. Selznick. There are none of the subtle, bittersweet touches of character or plot twists that characterize Siodmak's better works, nor is Siodmak's major theme of personal obsession explored beyond that of a killer's motive."
– Deborah Lazaroff Alpi, Robert Siodmak: A Biography (McFarland & Co., 1998).

"It has all the trappings of the genre...but the psychopaths are quite presentable people, and this, plus the skillful, swift direction, makes the terror convincing."
– Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies (Henry Holt and Co., 1984).

"The Spiral Staircase is truly frightening and extracts every ounce of tension from Dorothy McGuire as a deaf-mute [sic]."
– David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).

"Superb thriller...Hitchcock couldn't have bettered the causal mastery with which the opening defines not just time and place...but the themes of voyeurism and entrapment...It's one of the undoubted masterpieces of the Gothic mode, even if the happy ending comes more than a shade too pat."
- Tom Milne, TimeOut Film Guide

"Archetypal old dark house thriller, superbly detailed and set during a most convincing thunderstorm. Even though the identity of the villain is pretty obvious, this is a superior Hollywood product."
- Halliwell's Film & Video Guide

"The Spiral Staircase may be better fun to see than Bedlam, but I feel it has been overrated. It entirely lacks the mental excitement which Bedlam at least tries for. Even though she plays it well, I am not impressed by Dorothy McGuire - or anyone else - stunting along through several reels as a suffering mute; nor am I willingly hornswoggled by Ethel Barrymore's unprincipled use of her lighthouse eyes, wonderful as they are. Still, the movie is visually clever..."
- James Agee

"One of the vintage RKO thrillers, with a reliable cast directed with stealth and an intermittent sense of domestic humour."
- Peter Cowie, Eighty Years of Cinema

"Superb Hitchcock-like thriller with unforgettable performance by McGuire."
- Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide

by Rob Nixon