Il capro espiatorio

Provincial University professor from England chances to meet his diabolical, selfish twin while on vacation in Paris. Daphne Du Maurier's novel gets a highly polished screen-treatment, with star Alec Guinness very fine in the dual role, the split-screen photography and editing pulled off with skill. After being tricked into assuming the French nobleman's eccentric life, the teacher finds himself settling well into this new role as a business tycoon and family man--until his glinty-eyed look-alike returns. Bette Davis has a small but important, amusing role as a dowager Countess, and there's also a wreck of a wife, a wise little girl, a loyal chauffeur, and an Italian mistress. Gore Vidal worked on the adaptation, and the literate script is absorbing yet constricting for the teacher-character (he can only attempt to explain so much without throwing the whole plot off-course). There's a lot of talk in the early stages that the Count is delusional and perhaps schizophrenic, all of which is quickly dropped once the teacher assumes his life. Still, it's a smartly-planned movie, one without hysterics or false dramatics. Guinness seems a bit uncomfortable at times, though this may have been intentional and is acceptable behavior here. A very entertaining film with some weak or disappointing passages, but just as many adept ones and a satisfying finish. *** from ****

Glad I finally was able to see this great film from 1959 with a great performance by Alex Guinness, (John Braratt/DeGue) who plays a duel role and is completely outstanding in his great acting abilities. Betty Davis, (Countess) gives a great supporting role and from what I had read, Davis & Guinness did not get along very well during the filming of this film. John Braratt is a professor of French who teaches at a college and runs into a man who looks exactly like him and this other man, DeGue drugs Braratt and leaves him in a hotel with all his passports and clothing. John Braratt gets all caught up in DeGue's family involving a wife, daughter, sister-in-law and his mistress. As the film progresses forward he seems to be enjoying his new role. Great acting and a must see film.

The Scapegoat has flown under the radar over the years and while it's not a classic movie, it is pretty compelling. Just watching the glorious Bette Davis carve up the scenery without moving a muscle is worth your time alone!

Actually; the entire cast is exemplary....

Peter Sallis (you'll recognize the voice/face) makes a very brief appearance at the beginning of the movie as a customs inspector. He must be 100 years old by now! Geoffrey Keen is sublime as the manservant, Gaston. For me, though, the irascible daughter steals this movie and makes it her own. The jolly hockey sticks are strong with this one!

An odd beginning and an unsatisfying ending...

I haven't read the book, but it's never clear to me if the innocent French teacher on holiday in France was deliberately set up way in advance or he really did just meet his doppelganger by chance and allow himself to be dragged into this vortex of intrigue.

But that aside, when John Barrat eventually arrives at the large house and is welcomed as Jacques De Gue, that rather messy start is forgiven and forgotten.

And the ending also fails to satisfy completely, too. I'd like to have seen how his future gets worked out with his adopted family. Instead, we see him snogging his mistress.

It's nice to see France as it once was and how I remember it in my childhood on holidays. Quiet, with serene cobbled streets and ancient houses. I can still remember the powerful smell of fresh French bread in the mornings... What a shame all that is now gone.

Sir Alec underplays his part and casually strolls through the fantastic situation that he's been thrust into. I'd like to have seen David Niven have a shot at this. I think he would have made this movie a lot more exciting... but it is what it is and it's still a pretty interesting way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon!

There was more than one reason for wanting to see 'The Scapegoat'. Alec Guinness was an enormously versatile actor who played two or more characters in the same film better than a lot of actors (i.e. his tour-de-force work in 'Kind Hearts and Coronets'). Also have always hugely admired Bette Davis and really like to love many of her performances. Daphne DuMaurier was a fine author, and while adaptations of her work varied some of them are truly fine indeed (i.e. 1940's 'Rebecca').

Sadly, 'The Scapegoat' is really not one of her better adaptations. Not an awful film by all means, but its troubled production (most of it revolving around Davis, apparently intolerable to work with with almost nobody being on her good side) is evident all over it throughout and only Guinness and composer Bronislau Kaper come off completely unscathed. Everybody did much better work before and since, for me in particular Davis' performance, coming up to her twilight years period, is one of her worst and it is a shame because she was one fine actress.

Guinness does a noble job in his two roles, underplaying without looking uncomfortable or bored. Irene Worth, Nicole Maurey and Pamela Brown do well with what they have, their characters could have been written with more meat but Worth particularly makes the most of it. 'The Scapegoat' is nicely and professionally made, especially the photography with seamless work done with making the double roles not too obvious.

Kaper's score is both beautiful (with a sumptuously orchestrated but not gloopy love-like theme) and ominous, with shades of Rachmaninov in the piano writing in the main and end title music. Not overbearing what goes on. Enough of the script intrigues and once the film gets going it doesn't feel overly wordy.

It takes time to get going however and some of the plotting later on in the film gets over-complicated and muddled. The book's plot is pretty complex too but not to this extent. Robert Hamer's terrible struggles behind the scenes shows in his direction, which is too often ill at ease and pedestrian.

On the most part, 'The Scapegoat' could have done with a lot more edge and suspense, of which there is not enough of here and they were things that were very much there in the book. The ending takes ambiguity way too far with things crying out for resolution that didn't come and it confused the film even more. As good an actress Davis was, her outrageous hamminess here felt like it came from another film as it really didn't gel with everything else.

Concluding, am very mixed on this film. Has its strengths but too many big problems. 5/10

Based on a Daphne du Maurier source-text, THE SCAPEGOAT is very much in the tradition established by Hamer's more famous earlier film KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949), also starring Guinness. In this film Guinness plays two roles; that of a mild-mannered university teacher whose identity is stolen by a rakish French aristocrat. The university teacher takes over the aristocrat's life, and proves rather good at it; so much so that he does not want to recover his old life when the aristocrat asks him to. The climax is a violent one. Hamer's film, although set in France, takes a particularly English approach to death; the performances are quietly understated, and the atmosphere of menace restrained. Bette Davis seems rather out of place in a cameo role as the aristocrat's mother; her grande dame performance, complete with rolling New England vowels, contrasts starkly with that of Guinness. The ending is a bit peremptory, betraying the fact that THE SCAPEGOAT was not without its production difficulties, especially when scriptwriter Gore Vidal had to deal with an increasingly alcoholic director. Nonetheless THE SCAPEGOAT is definitely worth a view, if only for Guinness' versatility as an actor.