The Sleeping Tiger

Alexis Smith was one of many American stars who came to the United Kingdom to find work which was becoming less and less in Hollywood as less feature films were being made.. She was lucky to get this role opposite rising British cinema favorite Dirk Bogarde.

Smith plays the wife of criminal psychologist Alexander Knox who believes that with some analysis some criminals can be cured. So far not different than those two Hollywood classics Blind Alley and The Dark Past. But in those cases criminals broke into the homes of psychologists Ralph Bellamy and Lee J. Cobb and under stress the two mental health professionals did some probing.

But Bogarde is a selected case study. He's paroled to Knox and gets to live in his home where Smith finds the sexy Bogarde impossible to resist.

Bogarde is Stanley Kowalski with a criminal record if this film had been made on this side of the pond Marlon Brando would have been an obvious choice for the part. Let's say that Knox should have kept his business and professional life separate. Smith is great as a forty something woman in some serious heat.

One person I always enjoy seeing in British films is Hugh Griffith who always brings something to even a relatively colorless part like a police inspector here.

Blacklisted director Joseph Losey directed The Sleeping Tiger and it's a fine piece of work

Joseph Losey, working under a pseudonym after his blacklisting, didn't want to make this overbaked British melodrama. And who can blame him, given the heavy-breathing histrionics of the screenplay, a ridiculous concoction about a psychiatrist and his sexually frustrated wife harboring a hoodlum. The plot turns are unconvincing, the music hilariously overblown, and Alexander Knox, as the shrink, terminally uninteresting.

What makes this mess watchable is its game imitation of American noir tropes (dark alleys, femmes fatales, car chases), and some good very early rock-and-roll/jazz in the pub sequences. Also, the film can be viewed as a warmup for the later Losey-Bogarde collaborations, which explored similar themes (guilt, moral ambiguity, the nature of evil) much more expertly.

A certain Victor Hanbury is credited with directing this remarkable psychological drama but that won't fool any of Joseph Losey's admirers since it shares not only thematic similarities with one of his most notable American films, THE PROWLER (1951), but was indeed the turning point of his career in many ways: blacklisted by Hollywood for his Communist leanings, Losey fled first to Italy and then to Britain, remaining in Europe for the rest of his days. THE SLEEPING TIGER also marked the start of a fruitful collaboration (resulting in five films) between Losey and star Dirk Bogarde, who here shows a definite maturity miles away from the bland matinée idol roles he typically played during this period; the film itself has an intensity not found in contemporary British cinema.

Alexis Smith (terrific in one of her last starring roles) and Alexander Knox (playing his part in the Glenn Ford manner – where a quiet exterior conceals a strong personality, hence the film's title) are the married couple whose sheltered suburban lives are invaded by smart but incorrigible thug Bogarde; Knox is a psychiatrist whom the young man had tried to hold up, but has the tables turned on him and is subsequently kept on in the former's house as a 'guinea pig' – echoes of BLIND ALLEY (1939) and THE DARK PAST (1948) – where he stirs up the passionate instincts of the doctor's frustrated American wife. Needless to say, there's no happy ending for any of the characters: the climax provides plenty of fireworks and twists – with Losey's ironic symbolism being maintained till the film's very last shot. Composer Malcolm Arnold adapts his score to each of the film's moods, alternating between the sleazy and the histrionic.

Unfortunately, the poor-quality Public Domain print I watched bears some evident signs of wear-and-tear as there are a handful of jarring jump-cuts throughout (resulting in a running-time of 87 minutes against the official 89); several years back, the film was released on PAL VHS but no official DVD is in sight yet in any region (a status, alas, in common with the majority of Losey's work prior to the 1960s).

A more apt title would have been The Sleeping Tigress, for it's Alexis Smith's performance that holds this movie together and lends it erotic friction. Despite her old-money looks and regal carriage, Smith numbered among the many talents which Hollywood mis- and under- used. She claimed attention in two late-forties Bogart vehicles, Conflict (where she was good) and The Two Mrs. Carrolls (in which she was even better, and held her own against Barbara Stanwyck). But most of her movie career consisted of mediocre roles – the ones the star actresses turned down or had to refuse owing to other commitments. (It wasn't until Stephen Sondheim's Follies on Broadway in the ‘70s that her own star shone).

In this film from Joseph Losey's English exile following the Hollywood witch hunt, she plays the bored wife of psychotherapist Alexander Knox (and with him pottering around the house, who wouldn't be bored?). Bleeding-heart Knox takes a troubled young man with a prison record (Dirk Bogarde) under his roof in hopes of performing a therapeutic Pygmalion job on him. At first Smith acts snooty, then grows intrigued, and finally throws herself at Bogarde with pent-up abandon.

Comes the crunch as Knox, in a three-minute Freudian breakthrough reminiscent of Lee J. Cobb's instant rehabilitation of William Holden in The Dark Past, turns the lying, thieving, abusive Bogarde into a contrite milquetoast. When Bogarde then bids her farewell, Smith careens into dementia every bit as swiftly as Bogarde was healed and feigns an assault in hopes that Knox will defend her `honor' with that gun every therapist keeps in his desk drawer....

It's a lame story that might have been more convincing in an American context; the London setting and British conventions (in particular Knox's) stifle it. Bogarde started out playing this sort of charming wrong'un but isn't especially memorable here (except for his towering pompadour that must have been borrowed from Mario Lanza). But Smith's feral feline makes The Sleeping Tiger worth the ticket price.

It's just a bit too much. The good doctor is attacked at gunpoint. He disarms the bad guy, then brings him home to dinner, where his high strung wife spars with the guy. Of course, the two eventually begin a movie long tryst. Dirk Bogarde is a bad boy who is a bundle of anger. He usually gets what he wants but carries more baggage than a porter at an airport. Alexis Smith is the femme fatale. She is older and bored with her psychologist husband, who is determined to resurrect the lad. He is willing to allow this man to do whatever he wants: bringing women to the house, bossing around the help, robbing jewelry stores and businesses. He is pursued by a cop who is on to him but has respect for the doctor and backs off on an arrest. It's hard to believe that this man should give a rip about Bogarde, but somehow he's willing to withdraw. The weakest part of the movie is when it all falls into place. It's so pat. A contemporary film would have built the house a card at a time; this happens in milliseconds. Then we have the denouement which I will not spoil. Let me just say it was a disappointment. The movie is visually sharp and the acting is pretty good. I never really like Alexis Smith much and she is a little grating here. Still, it's a decent performance and the subject is a little ahead of its time.