El hombre de gris

The Man in Grey is directed by Leslie Arliss and adapted to screenplay by Margaret Kennedy and Doreen Montgomery from the novel of the same name written by Eleanor Smith. It stars Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger. Music is By Cedric Mallabey and cinematography by Arthur Crabtree.

A forerunner of Gainsborough's Wicked Women movies, The Man in Grey is a delicious slice of British noir pie.

Proudly decked out in period attire, story is ripe with dastards, narcissists, connivers, the selfish and the cruel. Headed up by Mason's Lord Rohan and Lockwood's Hesther Shaw, these people will stop at nothing to get what they want in life. It doesn't matter who is around them, friends and family etc, if they can in any way hinder their respective selfish goals then they will be trampled upon and not a further thought will be given. It all simmers to the boiling point where lives will not just be ruined, but also ended.

The four principal players are great, their respective careers well on the way to leaving behind considerable bodies of work. Arliss (The Night Has Eyes) keeps the story simple in spite of the many character strands and traits jostling for meaty exposure, and photographer Crabtree (Waterloo Road) accentuates the miserablist ambiance with sharp black and white lensing.

The use of black-face on white actors is awfully out dated, as is some of the dialogue, but don't hold these things against The Man in Grey. It's a darn fine bodice botherer, resplendent with characters straight out of noir's dark alleyways. 8/10

Lord Rohan isn't to be blamed for wanting to marry a healthy young woman who will produce a male heir for him, nor is Clarissa to blame for so quickly accepting his proposal, after all her prospects weren't all that great. Nor can I blame Hester for wanting all the things she could never have growing up. No, this is just how it was in those days. I enjoyed Margaret Lockwood's performance the most; it's hard to show remorse in a cold, calculating character and she brings it off well. Calvert, Mason and Granger give her excellent support.

'The Man In Grey' was the first film in the cycle of Gainsborough costume melodramas (which ended in 1948 with 'The Bad Lord Byron') and it's easily one of the very best. At the time, it was the pairing of a superstar (Lockwood), a star (Mason), a rising star (Calvert) and a newcomer (Granger), a combination which catapulted all four to the top of their profession, and made them the four names most associated with the costume. It's a pity that the four never made another movie all together!

Margaret Lockwood as Hesther was just pure evil - a cold, calculating woman. One does get the idea that there is a small glimmer of kindness inside her, but she squashes it pretty quickly. Phyllis Calvert was as sweet as honey, as usual the beloved heroine. Her Clarissa is the main character of the tale - married off to Lord Rohan (Mason) because he desires an heir, she soon tires of his indifference and falls for traveling player Rokeby (Granger). Hesther (Lockwood) in turn falls for Rohan and he for her. And of course you know that's set for trouble. A hint of how much trouble? THIS is the film with the infamous horse-whip thrashing scene.

What's also interesting is the whole story is told in flashback, when Calvert and Granger, descendents of the Rohan and Rokeby families, meet at an auction of the Rohan estate. Nice to see a bit of modern dress for a change!

A good old-fashioned bodice-ripper, it was the first big success for Britain's Gainsborough Studios which decided to take on the big costume dramas of Hollywood with home-grown talent. Introducing to the masses soon-to-be-familiar names like Mason, Granger, Lockwood and Calvert, it set the template for succeeding and ever more successful variations on this particular formula, often employing different combinations of this same quartet of acting talent.

High art it isn't, based as it is on a popular novel of the day, but it's easy to imagine its populist and escapist appeal to a wartime audience. James Mason, for one, hated the film and his own acting in it but the fact of the matter is that it's his presence in the titular role, as the misogynistic, sadistic and decadent Lord Rohan, who despite his despised and feared personal characteristics has the fabulous wealth and high status which make him the most desirable bachelor of the day. This is how he meets the pretty, sparky, trusting debutante Clarissa Marr, played by Phyllis Calvert, whose mother offers her to Rohan at what can only be described as a female cattle market, indeed just like all the other mothers and daughters of the day in attendance.

However it's not long before the young bride comes to her senses after she does her wifely duty in siring him a son and heir at which opportune moment just when she feels doomed to a loveless marriage, into her life enters Granger's Peter Rokesby, an adventurer fallen on hard times but otherwise dashing, handsome and sincere in his feelings for her which she soon reciprocates.

Soon she gets him a place as librarian, of all things, at Rohan Hall but there's a viper in this new love-nest in the shape of the darkly beautiful Hesther Shaw, played with relish by Lockwood. Of low birth but with high ambitions, she uses Clarissa's desire for one good friend in her life to also enter the household and usurp her position as Rohan's woman of choice, becoming effectively his live-in mistress. This ABBA-esque set-up with all four new and ex-lovers under the one roof of course can't last with machinations on all sides of the quadrangle leading up to not one but two murders, one of them infamous for its brutality as Rohan gets the whip-hand over his wife's murderer.

Maybe I shouldn't have, but I really enjoyed this Regency romp. I found the "two-good, two-bad" interplay of the four main characters added a degree of psychological intrigue as the plot developed in sometimes surprising ways. It's not perfect, the young black boy (in obvious blackface, and why did he have to be black anyway?) who plays an important part in the denouement seems to be reading his lines off-screen, the background music is far too intrusive and I disliked the present-day framing device which threw together the descendants of Calvert and Granger to sweeten the ending.

But with its handsome and pretty leads, whirlwind action and impressive sets, it's easy to see why it was so successful in its day.

The four stars who were the cornerstone of the British Film Industries Gainsborough Pictures, James Mason, Phyllis Calvert, Margaret Lockwood, and Stewart Granger got to star in The Man In Grey. It's a brooding tale of unhappily married wife during the Regency Period, probably after the Napoleonic Wars. There certainly is no mention of the war in the plot.

Two people Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger meet during an auction sale during wartime Great Britain. An estate is being sold off as the last of the male heirs has died. Calvert is the last surviving woman who can't inherit and Granger is the descendant of a man who was involved with one of the ancestors and has an heirloom or two of his own. The camera focuses on a series of mundane antiques and then it dissolves to the Regency period where the story is told and we see the connection of all these objects to the lives of the four stars.

James Mason is in the title role and he's a titled Earl who is haughty and arrogant and revels in being an aristocrat. He has to take a wife to begat an heir, but he wants one who won't get too much in the way of the rakish lifestyle he has no intention of changing. Among Regency aristocrats even he's giving them a bad name, a fact that Raymond Lovell and Nora Swinburne as the Prince Regent and Mrs. Fitzherbert are quick to notice.

Who Mason has chosen for a bride is Phyllis Calvert, a pretty and somewhat naive young thing. Naive so much that she takes as a friend a young woman not of her class when they were both in Martita Hunt's finishing school.

Calvert's ill chosen friend is Margaret Lockwood who gets thrown out of the school for some indiscreet behavior. Years later when Calvert is married to Mason she finds Lockwood now with an acting troupe. Back then being an actor if you weren't William MacCready or Edwin Forrest you were not considered respectable. And note those two examples were men.

Calvert's like Melanie Hamilton who sees only the good in people. But Lockwood is one exponential Scarlett O'Hara. Imagine Scarlett on steroids and you have Lockwood's character. She wants Mason with all that the title and privileges will bring. And his mojo really gets going with her.

And Calvert's mojo gets going for the first time in years with likable gypsy Stewart Granger. This was Granger's first real big part in film and it brought him great critical notices and fulfilled promises of future stardom.

Good as Granger and Calvert are, they pale beside the evil characters that Mason and Lockwood essay. I would have to say Lockwood is the more evil mainly because she hides it so well until the end. Mason's a lot, but he isn't a hypocrite.

One curious piece of casting is young Harry Scott as the young black slave Toby is interesting. It could be the only case of blackface in the British cinema. Since this was the only credit young Mr. Scott had we don't know for sure, but I think this was a white kid in makeup.

The Man In Grey is one of the best films the British cinema turned out during World War II. Like the lead characters who wonder about the connection between them, the British movie-going public went to see this film and put themselves in the places of the leads and wondered about their ancestors and their doings during a postwar period of peace. It's got some of the best acting going by four very skilled players and a good cast in support. And it holds up very well today.