Der Sündenbock

The Scapegoat has flown under the radar over the years and while it's not a classic movie, it is pretty compelling. Just watching the glorious Bette Davis carve up the scenery without moving a muscle is worth your time alone!

Actually; the entire cast is exemplary....

Peter Sallis (you'll recognize the voice/face) makes a very brief appearance at the beginning of the movie as a customs inspector. He must be 100 years old by now! Geoffrey Keen is sublime as the manservant, Gaston. For me, though, the irascible daughter steals this movie and makes it her own. The jolly hockey sticks are strong with this one!

An odd beginning and an unsatisfying ending...

I haven't read the book, but it's never clear to me if the innocent French teacher on holiday in France was deliberately set up way in advance or he really did just meet his doppelganger by chance and allow himself to be dragged into this vortex of intrigue.

But that aside, when John Barrat eventually arrives at the large house and is welcomed as Jacques De Gue, that rather messy start is forgiven and forgotten.

And the ending also fails to satisfy completely, too. I'd like to have seen how his future gets worked out with his adopted family. Instead, we see him snogging his mistress.

It's nice to see France as it once was and how I remember it in my childhood on holidays. Quiet, with serene cobbled streets and ancient houses. I can still remember the powerful smell of fresh French bread in the mornings... What a shame all that is now gone.

Sir Alec underplays his part and casually strolls through the fantastic situation that he's been thrust into. I'd like to have seen David Niven have a shot at this. I think he would have made this movie a lot more exciting... but it is what it is and it's still a pretty interesting way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon!

"The Scapegoat" starts out with a clever premise and the promise of intrigue, but soon settles down as a character study marked by good, solid acting. Alec Guinness is the star with a dual role, first as a drab professor with an empty life, and then as the scion of a wealthy family who parties, womanizes and neglects his family. They meet and decide to switch places. The professor now has a life, but the rich guy vanishes.

Now follows an absorbing story, based on a novel by Daphne DuMaurier, as the professor enjoys his new surroundings and tries to inject some heart and purpose into his new life, which arouses some suspicions. This may have been a novella fleshed out to a feature-length movie, and I say this because the picture does go on, and the pace is somewhat sluggish - that is, until the surprise ending.

Guinness, Irene Worth and Nicole Maurey put this British/MGM film over with superb acting, with an enlarged cameo by Bette Davis. "The Scapegoat" is something of a departure for Alec Guinness as he gets to show off his considerable acting chops, and there are no comic interludes to be found. The viewer is kept in the dark regarding a solution until the very end, and the end is worth the preceding 90 minutes.

Alec Guinness once again plays a dual role. In this one, his two personas are that of a wicked French count and a benign Englishman. Despite some interesting supporting cast, including a very Baby Janeish Bette Davis, the story seems somehow only half told, and the two Guinness characters remain frustratingly underdeveloped. We sense a conflict between good and evil, but we are never made to understand why this is nor how it came about. The ending is frustrating in the extreme.

I decided to write this primarily to point out the appearance of Donald Pleasence as a desk clerk. Up till now, he remains uncredited.

All of this said, I would still recommend watching this oddity the next time it happens to come around. It is Alec Guinness, afterall.

Glad I finally was able to see this great film from 1959 with a great performance by Alex Guinness, (John Braratt/DeGue) who plays a duel role and is completely outstanding in his great acting abilities. Betty Davis, (Countess) gives a great supporting role and from what I had read, Davis & Guinness did not get along very well during the filming of this film. John Braratt is a professor of French who teaches at a college and runs into a man who looks exactly like him and this other man, DeGue drugs Braratt and leaves him in a hotel with all his passports and clothing. John Braratt gets all caught up in DeGue's family involving a wife, daughter, sister-in-law and his mistress. As the film progresses forward he seems to be enjoying his new role. Great acting and a must see film.

According to Piers Paul Reid's biography nobody got along with anybody involved with the making of The Scapegoat. Not star Alec Guinness, director Robert Hamer, author Daphne DuMaurier and screenwriter Gore Vidal. Maybe had everyone been in sync The Scapegoat might have turned out better and been one of Guinness's classic films.

Like Kind Hearts And Coronets, Guinness has more than one role. He's both a teacher of French at an English school on holiday in France and a French count for whom he is a double.

After a night's carousing with his twin English Alec wakes hung over wih identification gone and the French Guinness's in its place. With no reasonable explanation to offer English Alec decides to enjoy the life of a French noble.

Those includ wife Irene Worth, Sister Pamela Brown, Annabel Bartlett and a demanding mistress Nicole Maurey the only French person in a film set in France..

As Guinness gets acclimated to a new identity he really gets involved with the family and their problems. But when Worth is killed in a fall while he's away from the family chateau, one Guinness realizes the other is setting him up.

Watching The Scapegoat I was expecting some sophisticated comic lines to emerge. This being an Alec Guinness film. It never developed that way, but several times it seemed on the brink.

Bette Davis plays French Alec's grande dame of a mother and the role is done in grand Bette Davis style. According to the Guinness biography Davis disliked everybody on the set and it was like she was giving them all acting lessons.

If everyone had been in tandem The Scapegoat could have been a better film.