The Fallen Idol [DVD] [1948]

Phillipe, the 8-year-old son of the ambassador, bored and lonely, has been left in the charge of Baines, the embassy butler, and his wife. The ambassador has gone to bring back his wife, who has been ill for several months. Phillipe (Bobby Henrey) idolizes Baines (Ralph Richardson), who talks to him, tells him stories, takes him for walks and pays attention to him. Baines' wife (Sonia Dresdel), however, is a shrew. She has little patience for Phillipe, she runs the housekeeping side of the embassy with an iron hand, and she is unshakeable in her commitment to the cold, loveless marriage she has with her husband. She doesn't know, quite yet, that Baines and Julie (Michele Morgan), a secretary in the embassy, have been meeting secretly each week for months, just for tea or a private walk. They love each other but seem to find no way to break free of his marriage. And then Mrs. Baines, after an hysterical argument when she discovers Julie, is found dead at the foot of the grand stairway in the embassy. Phillipe thinks Baines killed her and is determined to protect him. His lies make things much, much worse.

This is a marvelous film, full of irony and subtlety. Phillipe is too young to grasp the meaning of much of what he sees and hears. He unexpectedly interrupts a meeting between Baines and Julie in a tea shop. She is telling Baines she will be leaving; that their relationship is hopeless. Baines is trying to find someway for her to stay, if even for just a day or two more. Suddenly there is Phillipe, happy to find Baines, climbing onto a seat next to them, having a pastry, observing what Baines and Julie are saying to each other so quietly and intensely, and believing when Baines says they are talking about a friend and that Julie is his niece. Something is happening, he knows, but he simply doesn't register how desperately they want to talk to each other without pretense.

Phillipe tells fibs, especially to protect McGregor, his small pet snake, from Mrs. Baines' anger. When she accuses him of telling lies, Baines tries to protect Phillipe by saying that there are lies and there are lies...that some lies can simply be a kindness to protect others. Mrs. Baines finds ways to trap Phillipe into admitting he met Baines' "niece." When she dies, Baines tries to find ways to use lies...or at least not the full truth...to protect Julie. Phillipe lies to the police in an effort to protect Baines. The conclusion of the film is a masterpiece of amusing irony when we realize the truth might be more dangerous to Baines than Phillipe's lies.

Carol Reed directed The Fallen Idol in 1948. The year before he gave us Odd Man Out. In 1949 came The Third Man. Then Outcast of the Islands in 1952. That's four incredible films, one right after the other. And don't forget Our Man in Havana in 1959. The Fallen Idol, The Third Man and Our Man in Havana were collaborations with Graham Greene. These movies are not just literate and often amusing, they're thoughtful and often uneasy. And all are stunning to look at.

The Fallen Idol gives us two great performances, or rather one great performance and one performance great despite itself. Ralph Richardson as Baines is as understated as the character. We're witnessing a character full of emotion and longing, yet so carefully proper and repressed it hurts. Baines relationship with Phillipe is genuine, yet in many ways it's based on lies and made-up stories. This is one of Richardson's best performances. As Phillipe, Bobby Henrey does a masterful job, but that's because of the patience and skill of Carol Reed and the cleverness of the film editor. Henrey was a nonprofessional who got the part because Reed thought he looked exactly like the kind of young boy Phillipe would look like. As a person who worked on the film with Reed said later, Henrey couldn't act and "had an attention span of a demented flea." Reed took infinite pains to gain Henrey's friendship and confidence. He would walk the boy through the part, usually standing in for Richardson when Richardson would have been off camera feeding Henrey lines. He shot miles of film with Henrey, and then spliced the bits and pieces together into coherent reaction shots. You'll note that Henrey has almost no scenes that go for more than a word or sentence before there are cutaways. Even so, the result is a great film portrayal of a little boy, Phillipe, who can be irritating, impatient and willful, and yet touching in his determination protect his friend, Baines.

If you have an all-region DVD player, the Criterion region 1 release of The Fallen Idol includes an excellent booklet with three essays on the film and a fine 2006 documentary, A Sense of Carol Reed, with interviews from other directors. The Criterion DVD transfer is excellent.

Much imitated child's view thriller that involves the viewer all the way. Has echoes of The Third Man, the next movie by this writer director team, about it, in terms of style and photography. Reed tries out those distinctive camera angles to very good effect here, and the set is brilliantly used - height - without giving too much away is emphasised to great effect, by using the set and some clever camera angles. This is another of those films that just looks made for black and white and shows it once again to be a potentially very arty medium to work in. Lovely camera work and direction and then we have the screenplay by GG. Very fine indeed, subtle as ever while having tremendous style and great impact where it's needed. The little touches of wry humour give real character to this film and help make it a class above the run of the mill features of the period. It feels quite small and neat and even modest in its remit, but this is a perfect match for the effect the film makers want this to achieve - it is a film about the small world of a child, and how his views are totally dictated by those things he knows he saw and heard - of course without understanding the larger ways of the adult world. It is handled beautifully, it is not too ambitious or expansive and focuses just on what it needs to, to get the result it's after. Simple but clever, and RR shines with a performance full of his trademark charisma. Has to be one of the ten best British movies ever made, and I can think of only a few others that would be as helpful to a film making student for learning their craft. A true classic it is.

Carol Reed's "Fallen Idol," which I first saw as a child, withstands the test of time. Even though I didn't understand the adult implications of the plot then, I have never forgotten the story (still associating it with the little wooden-seated movie house where my father took the family every week to see British films). I was not disappointed; I found it just as absorbing--and even more compelling--half-a-century later.

The screenplay is, needless to say, excellent. Working closely with Carol Reed, Graham Greene rewrote his original short story, "The Basement Room." In "Fallen Idol," which takes place at a foreign embassy in London, Greene is actually revisiting the topic of a child's-eye-view of spying, loneliness, betrayal by an idolized adult, and the overhearing of frightening things that are not properly understood (Compare "Fallen Idol" to his haunting three-page story, "I Spy," about another small lonely boy who witnesses betrayal and is frightened of things that happen in the dark.). Greene was to collaborate successfully again with Reed on "The Third Man," and--from the sublime to the ridiculous--on "Our Man In Havana."

Expertly directed by Reed, the child Philippe--played by Bobby Henrey, a non-actor--is so natural and believable that one might say that he is ably assisted by Ralph Richardson and Michelle Morgan (with Jack Hawkins in the minor role of a detective who lends his chiming watch to the boy in order to distract him). The cinematography is also superb. The moody black and white renders the melodramatic story, which in color might seem overwrought, plausible. The music of William Alwyn, who also scored Reed's "Odd Man Out," further contributes to the stark ambience of the film.

One of the delights of British cinema of the era was the non-sequitur, as when the clock-maker interrupts the police interrogation of Baines, the Butler, in order to wind one of the gigantic embassy clocks. Just when Reed has wound the plot to its tightest point, he introduces the clock-winder, who serves as a moment of understated comic relief (Part of Reed's genius was knowing when to use moments of humor to lighten the tension.) And yet, references to clocks and watches seem to serve a more subtle purpose in Reed and Greene's scenario, to emphasize both the slowness of time in the mind of the boy and the literal "watching" of something frightening that he shouldn't have seen.

This film may not be for everyone (For instance, my son, who likes action flicks in wide-screen surround-sound color, would probably hate it.), but it is certainly recommended for the discerning viewer who likes a time-tested suspense film, which can be not only watched, but also taken at more than mere face-value.