No, not the Moody Blues--but the events of The Fallen Idol--a 1948 collaboration between writer Graham Greene and director Carol Greene. Their later work together included the iconic The Third Man, but this movie is almost as good, and covers some of the same themes, including perceptions, loyalty between friends, and when that loyalty has to be sacrificed.
A seven-year-old boy is friends with a butler, who is having a clandestine romance with a younger woman. Almost all the events of the movie are seen through this boy's eyes, and it is up to us to interpret what is happening--and what the boy thinks is happening. (As David Lodge points out in an essay accompanying the film, Greene probably picked up this twist from Henry James's novel What Maisie Knew.) The boy is played with remarkable skill by Bobby Henrey, and the butler is nicely underplayed by Ralph Richardson. The set--a five-level replication of a foreign embassy in London--allows Reed all kinds of shots showing the boy as an observer, and his judicious use of Dutch angles (those askew, out-of-plumb shots) is more effective, I think, than his flamboyant use of them in The Third Man.
The still shows the wealth of acting talent that Reed worked with--Jack Hawkins, Richardson, Bernard Lee, Henrey, and Denis O'Dea. Criterion's remastering is characteristically meticulous: during Henrey's nightmarish odyssey through London streets, each cobblestone, each brick, shines with reflected light. It's almost a rehearsal for Holly Martins's vertiguous chase of Harry Lime through Vienna's fitfully illuminated streets. Supposedly, Greene liked this movie even better than The Third Man, and I can see why.
A seven-year-old boy is friends with a butler, who is having a clandestine romance with a younger woman. Almost all the events of the movie are seen through this boy's eyes, and it is up to us to interpret what is happening--and what the boy thinks is happening. (As David Lodge points out in an essay accompanying the film, Greene probably picked up this twist from Henry James's novel What Maisie Knew.) The boy is played with remarkable skill by Bobby Henrey, and the butler is nicely underplayed by Ralph Richardson. The set--a five-level replication of a foreign embassy in London--allows Reed all kinds of shots showing the boy as an observer, and his judicious use of Dutch angles (those askew, out-of-plumb shots) is more effective, I think, than his flamboyant use of them in The Third Man.
The still shows the wealth of acting talent that Reed worked with--Jack Hawkins, Richardson, Bernard Lee, Henrey, and Denis O'Dea. Criterion's remastering is characteristically meticulous: during Henrey's nightmarish odyssey through London streets, each cobblestone, each brick, shines with reflected light. It's almost a rehearsal for Holly Martins's vertiguous chase of Harry Lime through Vienna's fitfully illuminated streets. Supposedly, Greene liked this movie even better than The Third Man, and I can see why.
2 comments:
Couldn't have put it better myself.
aaaaefaf INDEED!
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