Behind the Mask

Based on a novel by John Rowan Wilson. Behind the Mask tries to cram in several storylines.

Philip Selwood (Tony Britton) is a surgeon who saunters into the post of Registrar in a hospital. Well he is engaged to Pamela Benson Gray (Vanessa Redgrave) who just happens to be the daughter of Sir Arthur Benson Gray (Michael Redgrave) the senior surgeon in the same hospital.

During the interview for the post, there are several other and more nervous candidates. Some of them think it is stitch up.

One of them is Polish anaesthetist Carl Romek (Carl Möhner) a concentration camp survivor who senses that Selwood is too cool a customer and likely to get it.

However Romek also gets a job at the same hospital and it turns out that Romek is a drug addict.

Selwood comes to his assistance after Romek overdoses but in doing so, one of Selwood's patient dies.

At an enquiry, Selwood protects Romek and places his own career at risk.

There are several themes in this film that would not be out of place in the present day. The battle between treating patients as humans or seeing them as a part of a process in the cutting edge of medicine.

I have to mention that Vanessa Redgrave who made her movie debut here. She is still acting and is the narrator in the hit BBC period medical television show Call the Midwife.

There are scenes here that now look odd. The amount of doctors smoking in hospital. Indeed it reminds me of my own family GP who was a chain smoker and used to tell people to quit smoking while puffing away!

The biggest problem was I could not buy the character of Selwood. He was too altruistic. Putting his career at risk for a foreigner, one who is a drug addict and sponging money.

The movie is an oddity but an interesting look at the fledgling years of the NHS.

Brian Desmond Hurst is best remembered for his SCROOGE starring Alistair Sim. Here, he tackles the usual story of a young surgeon, played by Tony Britton, starting out under the aegis of Michael Redgrave -- Britton's character is engaged to Redgrave's daughter, played by Vanessa Redgrave in her screen acting debut.

Careful attention has been paid to technical issues of the era, and the capable cast handles their roles well enough. However, the standard plots of such movies are in full evidence, making this movie lack more than the standard levels of emotional involvement -- it's obvious that certain roles are going to behave in certain ways at certain times. In addition, DP Robert Krasker's color cinematography has a late-40s green cast to it and it looks like the color separations have shrunk at microscopically different rates making it slightly out of focus. I suspect the green cast may have something to do with the drug-addict-doctor subplot, adding an absinthe tint to the affair.

Still, Hurst's usual highly competent work keeps things moving along nicely. This one is definitely worth your time.

One of the more ambitious of the medical dramas then popular, 'Behind the Mask' boasts superior production values including photography by Robert Krasker and a memorable score by Geoffrey Wright.

Despite its overall subdued tone it manages to contain a graphic depiction of heart surgery in colour and a subplot involving drug addiction; while seen today possibly the film's most remarkable feature is the presence of Michael Redgrave's young daughter Vanessa - receiving an 'Introducing' credit - who later dismissed the film as "a stinker" and is plastered with makeup and speaks with a patrician accent she plainly found it politic to lose.

All the faults of the Fifties British movie - phoney characters in uninvolving situations and artificial looking studio sets. Characteristic dialogue "You've blotted your copy book pretty badly" or "Independence is like that. If you have plenty, you're glad to give it away." Talented people, notably Michael Redgrave and Carl Mohner make little impression.

The hospital Redgrave has built up is passing to the control of his opponent doctor. "If they're left alone, the Isherwoods will turn it into a laboratory., a much smaller thing."

Interest does pick up in the enquiry scene with the facts known but Malleson's committee trying hand out blame, while Sir. Michael strives to clear Britton, who refuses to take the easy option - compare the much better The SMALL BACK ROOM, which is likely to have influenced this, with Ken Loach still to come.

A serious film with an appropriate cast that fails to live up to its initial promise, though it does have a certain charm. Tony Britton is a promising young surgeon who becomes engaged to the senior surgeon's daughter (the young Vanessa Redgrave giving a slightly precious performance, though one I quite enjoyed.) Retrospective interest is added by the manners of the period, not least hospital staff who ceaselessly smoke everywhere with carefree abandon. Gradually though the story evolves into two strands, neither very persuasive. The first details Britton's involvement with a drug-addicted Polish colleague which lands him in serious trouble and in which he is then portrayed as becoming virtuous and altruistic to an improbable degree. The second, regarding the senior surgeon's deep concerns about his junior, played by the talented Niall MacGinnis (whom as well as being a first-rate character actor was also a qualified physician), is opaque as nothing is shown to justify his fears, though it looks as if we are intended to sympathise with them.