The Triumph of the Rat

Life is good. Ivor Novello, "The Rat" is now an accepted member of the Parisian elite, thanks to Isabel Jeans' sponsorship, and able to keep his old friends afloat. When he makes a bet with Miss Jeans that he can win the heart of Nina Vanna, he doesn't understand that he will lose either way.

This movie's predecessor, THE RAT, was apparently so wildly successful that it made everyone rich and famous for a while. It didn't last, of course, except for producer Michael Balcon; Novello was out of the movies in eight years -- although he certainly didn't suffer as a writer-performer on the stage -- and director Graham Cutts would make one more "Rat" movie (1929's RETURN OF THE RAT) and then a three year hiatus. He would discover that the people he had alienated when he was on the top -- among them Alfred Hitchcock -- were not anxious to help him out of the Quota Quickies.

In the meantime, of course, he had everything he needed to make a fascinating picture, full of the late-silent floating camera effects that would vanish for a decade when sound came in.

I must say I had high hopes of this film, having seen Novello in "The Lodger" and having heard so much in praise of him, but I'm afraid it did not work for me. My copy is of fair quality, which does not help, and the score does not relate directly to the action, which is even worse. I found that the story seemed to slow to a crawl in the ballroom scenes, though they are beautifully shot and include some POV shots as the swing goes back and forth. Zelie's revenge is well carried out and Boucheron suffers all manner of indignity, but with humility and resignation, but the ending is unsatisfactory and a little abrupt. One final complaint; Novello was the darling of the matinée crowd and, when properly photographed, a handsome chap, but in this movie, I felt that the camera had fallen out with him and the result is rather an average looking guy who cannot match the beautiful women who surround him. Still, if I get the chance, I will watch "The Rat."

There is certain injustice in the fate of certain directors and cinematographers and both Graham Cutts and Hal Young (who also filmed The Lodger) do a very fine job in this film that makes their subsequent slide into oblivion seem extremely harsh if one compares with the subsequent success and vast, but only partially deserved, reputation achieved by their Gainsborough colleague, Alfred Hitchcock.

Novello's writing and acting are both blandly elegant and gruesomely mawkish by turns, but passable if one can endure the actor's old-fashioned music-hall penchant for "facials", but it is the camera that is the real star of this film and, at times, as in the ball-scene, it produces something rather fine that actually deserved a somewhat less trivial script and a somewhat less self-indulgent star.

If the German industry would be massacred by Hitler, the British industry would be pared (if also, in a manner, saved) by the quota quickie and in both cases the casualties in terms of directors and cinematographers would be many. The survivors were not always necessarily the best or not always at any rate so significantly better than those who failed to survive.

The key to surviving, and indeed thriving, in a difficult ambiance lay in seizing on and capitalising on what slender opportunities were available. making of a film is always teamwork but the balance of power between the various members of the team is very variable. A supposed "auteur" of a film is perhaps a fine artists but also not infrequently a thief and a bully.

In this film the fine work is done by Cutts and Young but it is never THEIR film as much of their work simply subserves the antics of Novello.. The film belongs therefore in a sense, rightly or wrongly, to Novello. Compare this with The Lodger (not in the first place written by Novello) where the partnership between Hitchcock and Young could hardly be closer and Novello gives a much finer, more restrained performance. But here the film belongs unequivocally to Hitchcock.

Survival was also a matter of temperament, self-publicity, opportunism, ruthlessness and an eye for the main chance and Hitchcock was a champion in all those respects. But one should occasionally pause to salute the best work of those who fell by the wayside.