Caballero y ladrón

If ever there was a film that should have been a lot better, it is the 1940 version of "Raffles" - excellently cast is David Niven as the Gentleman cracksman, and with Olivia de Havilland (at her loveliest) as his girl-friend Gwen, with two excellent supporting players in Dame May Whitty and Dudley Digges. Lasting only just over an hour, it misses a wonderful opportunity to make something really exciting and suspenseful, but on those scores it fails. The predictability of it is a real let-down, and really the talent of the two main stars are wasted - Miss de Havilland has absolutely nothing to do except sit around and look gorgeous - she must have been forced by Warners to do this on loan out, because it followed so soon after her big success in "Gone With The Wind".

Scotland Yard inspector Dudley Digges opens up a wooden cabinet next to his desk...and turns on the television set. The cricket match is on and the star player is fan favorite A.J. Raffles.

The inspector and his colleagues have just been discussing the baffling case of "the Amateur Cracksman," a clever thief who leaves a signed note at the scene of each crime. Little do the Scotland Yard men realize that Raffles and the Amateur Cracksman are one and the same--celebrity by day, burglar by night.

David Niven is excellent as Raffles, that adventurous character who decides to hang up his secret life, finds it necessary to do one last job, and feels the pressure build as his cover is slowly chipped away. Pensive, charming, sly, quick-thinking....it's a great role for Niven.

Olivia de Havilland is fine as the socialite who loves the dashing Raffles but begins to wonder about his puzzling behavior. (However, her top billing just under Niven does not reflect her actual role in the picture; the two main roles belong to Niven and Digges.)

Dudley Digges is lots of fun as the steadfast inspector who doesn't miss much. He follows his suspects down to one of those large country houses where Dame May Whitty's jewels are a temptation to more than one would-be crook.

The plot is really nothing much but it's certainly entertaining watching these characters watch each other.

Bonus: Laurel and Hardy fans will enjoy seeing the great James Finlayson as a cab driver. And a note: Apparently the first televised cricket match was in 1938. Not sure if Scotland Yard offices really had TV yet.

David Niven is a gentleman thief who gets caught in a bind when a Scotland Yard inspector catches up with him. Olivia deHavilland costars as his romantic interest. Interesting premise, deeply flawed execution.

David Niven is perfectly cast in the role, but the pacing of the moving is painfully slow, and it just drags on and feels so much longer than its 75-ish minute length. I think the big problem is that Niven's character next to no reason for actually being a thief, so we're dragged along on escapades that don't really seem to have much point.

And then there is Olivia deHavilland, who was criminally underused in this film, to the point that she could have been completely written out and you wouldn't miss her. This movie had so much promise, and it just fell flat. I still prefer the 1930 film with Ronald Colman in the title role. It was a very fluid early talkie.

"Raffles" seems like it was a quickie - it doesn't last very long and it has an abrupt ending. Nevertheless, "Raffles" features two dazzling stars - David Niven, well-cast as an upper class thief, and Olivia de Havilland as the beautiful object of his affections.

One interesting thing about this film - which made me realize that I had seen it years before - is the early television in the inspector's office at the beginning of the movie.

I regret not seeing the Ronald Colman version. In this one, Niven is charming, handsome, and debonair as a man who seems to steal as a lark and then somehow returns the merchandise, to the frustration of the police. At the film's start, he steals a valuable painting, sends it to his favorite retired actress, and has her return it for the reward money. But when he tries to steal a necklace to help a friend replace money he gambled away before an audit takes place, he runs into another crook attempting to do the same thing, and complications arise.

There are some suspenseful moments toward the end of the movie, but all in all, it goes by too quickly, and the character of Raffles isn't sufficiently developed. It's almost as if the movie starts in the middle and ends before it's really over. De Havilland is absolutely beautiful, even if a couple of her hats are outrageous. She's really just doing an average ingénue role here. "Raffles" debuted in the U.S. just before "Gone With the Wind," and she probably made it right afterward.

Entertaining but disappointing.

I'm an great admirer of the Raffles books. E W Hornung was a better writer than the more famous Arthur Conan Doyle, his more famous brother in law. The stories were very well constructed,characters well-defined and deserved classics. This is a thin lazy adaptation, combining of several of the stories losing a great deal of what was important. It is though a scene by scene and largely word for word re-make of the superior 1930 Ronald Colman version.

One, and perhaps the, reason for the remake seemed obvious to me. The 1930 version was too steamy and too suggestive for 1939. When Ronald Colman courteously escorts the large and elderly Lady Melrose to her bedroom and wishes her goodnight, Lady Melrose affects to mishear and Colman repeats with great emphasis the finality of NIGHT!. It is made very clear from their expressions that Lady Melrose was hoping Colman would join her. It think it was not perhaps until the 1970s that Hollywood would again dare suggest such a thing. Colman's love interest is clearly passionately besotted with him and would do anything for him. It was realism but of a kind which Hollywood would I think never portray again. Firstly Hayes Code prudery and later the box office obligation to show women as heroic and independent.

The adaptation removes Bunny's connection with Raffles (formerly a junior at Raffles public (fee paying) school and the odd obligations this entailed. Bunny in this version has little purpose. Raffles was the ultimate professional thief and corrupts Bunny and in the process teaches him (and the reader) his philosophy of life and crime. His cricket was a calculated necessary high profile front. Raffles lived alone without a servant - his night time arrivals and departures, often in disguise made that obligatory

As other reviewers have said, Niven makes a good job of his part but only Olivia de Havillands loveliness makes the film at all watchable.

The best screen rendering of the Raffles was a 1975 British TV series - again combining different stories but a seamlessly invisible adaptation. The interiors were those of a wealthy single gentleman of 1890s London - based on gentleman's clubs. Raffles, Bunny and McKenzie were authentically true to the books. It did Hornung honour. BBC Radio has done two versions (at least), first a reading and second a full production complete with distinctive signature tune.

Thanks once again to Talking Pictures TV for screening these famous early Raffles versions. Otherwise I would never have known of them.