The Tenth Man (Vintage Classics) [Paperback]

One of Greene's "entertainments," this short novel written in 1944 was hidden away for nearly forty years before being discovered in the MGM files. Written as the idea for a film, the novella is a fine example of Greene's style, as finished and polished as any of his more complex novels.

Set in France during the war, the story concerns a group of thirty Frenchmen imprisoned by their German occupiers and then told that they must decide for themselves which three of the thirty men will be executed. One of the men who draws a marked ballot for his own death is a wealthy lawyer with considerable property who offers his entire fortune to any man who will take his place. One young man accepts, drawing up legal papers which give his newly acquired property to his sister and mother before he is executed.

The remaining three parts of the novel deal with the return of the now-penniless former owner to "his" house after the war, where the meets the dead man's sister and works as a servant under a new name; the arrival of an imposter who claims to be the former owner; and the showdown between the former owner and the imposter.

As is always the case with Greene, the dialogue is taut, revealing character and plot simultaneously, with no extraneous chat. The main character, like so many others Greene depicts, is a weak man whose bad choices, in this case his decision to buy his own life, have led to the complications which become the story. Living a lie, Chavel/Charlot faces a crisis of morality in which he must decide what, if anything, he can do to redeem himself to atone for the life-or-death decision he forced upon another man. The imposter who arrives at the house claiming to be the former owner is described as resembling a devil, and the showdown between him and the real former owner is seen as the struggle between goodness and evil.

Filled with ironies and absurdities, the novel maintains considerable suspense until the dramatic, tour de force of an ending. Too short to allow for much character development, the novella conveys a strong message within an exciting little morality tale filled with sharply observed details--simple without being simplistic.

"The Tenth Man," is a bleak suspenseful thriller, a crime drama of a novel, and a puzzling anomaly in the writing career of distinguished British author Graham Greene. For years, I couldn't figure it out. It is only 156 pages, really novella length, yet it has his usual power, though it lacks the accreted detail I've gotten used to in his work. Still, it gives us an excellent picture of wartime, occupied France, and the people who had to live there; the city of Paris, and the countryside at the time. Greene's characters, as ever, are sharply drawn, and ring true to their natures.

It is set in 1944, in a Gestapo prison in occupied France, during World War II, where 32 Frenchmen have been taken hostage. Local resistance activity causes the Germans to decide that one of every ten men - three men--must therefore meet their deaths by firing squad, but they don't care which three men. The hostages draw lots. Jean Louis Chevel, a lawyer and a rich man, gets one of the marked ballots; he offers his entire fortune, and all his holdings, to the heirs of any man who will take his place, and a sickly young man Michel Mangeot, known as "Janvier," agrees. As the Germans are driven out of France in 1944--Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944, and the war ends for the French, the hostages are released, and Chevel, not knowing what else to do, finds his way to his hereditary estate in the country. There, under an assumed name, he finds Janvier's mother and sister installed, and becomes their unpaid handyman. He falls a little in love with the sister, but realizes that mother and sister hate "Chevel" for taking Janvier's life. Then, suddenly, another man shows up, claiming to be Chevel. It is a bleak tale, as noted above, much briefer and less detailed than the author's usual work, although, in this latest crisis in his life, Chevel may be considered at least to have rediscovered his humanity and his courage.

The author, it turns out, amazingly enough, wrote the novella in 1944, well before VE Day, Victory in Europe Day, May 8, 1945. He wrote it as a film treatment for the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he was under contract, along with a couple of other treatments, one of which is very clearly the germ of his remarkable novel Our Man in Havana. At any rate, both Greene and the studio forgot about the existence of these treatments and they lay in the MGM archives until 1983, when someone found them and decided to publish at least THE TENTH MAN. Greene could barely remember writing the treatment, and thought it was only a few pages: he was mightily surprised to discover it was more than 150; and, as it was determined it was to be published, he worked on cleaning it up a bit. It was published in 1985. Then, as happened with many, if not most of his works, it was filmed, under the same title,The Tenth Man [DVD] [1988] as a 1988 television episode for the American show, "Hallmark Hall of Fame." And it got the all-star treatment: Anthony Hopkins Silence Of The Lambs [DVD] [1991]played Chavel; Kristin Scott Thomas Four Weddings And A Funeral [DVD] [1994] played Therese Mangeot, Janvier's sister. Derek Jacobi I Claudius - Complete BBC Series (5 Disc Box Set) [1976] [DVD]played the imposter Chevel; Cyril Cusack My Left Foot / The Field [DVD] [1989] played the priest. I caught this movie once on late-night TV, and, as noted above, wondered about it for years.

Greene (1904-1991), who was one of the more illustrious British writers of the 20th century, enjoyed a very long life, and a very long, distinguished, prolific writing career. Some of his writing highlights are The Power and the Glory, The End of the Affair, and The Third Man. Many of his books were bestsellers; many were made into movies. He was one of the better-known Catholic converts of his time; many of his thrillers, as this one, deal with Catholic themes of guilt and redemption. He created morally complex characters, while he explored moral and theological dilemmas through psychologically astute character studies, presented in exciting dramas on the international stage.

An interesting novella (at 112 pages, I suppose almost a novel) about some French prisoners under Nazi occupation. Some Germans are murdered in the town and the occupiers condemn one in every ten of the prisoners to be shot. The prisoners themselves have to draw lots. One of the unlucky three out of 30 prisoners, a wealthy lawyer, panics and offers his house and wordly goods to anyone who will take his place. A young lad takes his place and makes a will leaving his new found wealth to his sister and mother. The bulk of the story deals with the lawyer's guilt and his return to his old house under an alias, plus a further complication of identities. An overlooked gem that was a lost idea for a film written during the war, overlooked until 1983.

Also in this book are two other short treatments for potential film scripts. One, Jim Braddon and the War Criminal, sounds exciting and concerns an ordinary man who happens to look like a Nazi war criminal, loses his memory in an aeroplane crash, and then falls in with real war criminals and is caught and tried. The other, Nobody to Blame, is a rather farcical spy story.