Il decimo uomo

Hopkins is fantastic in his role as a victim to circumstances he can't control. The small gestures acting is the most difficult one but he manage to convince the audience.

In the late 1980s, I had just seen Anthony Hopkins in "The Bounty," which together with the earlier "Magic" convinced me he was an actor to watch for; and I had read Graham Greene's recently unearthed little novel "The Tenth Man," when I heard about this TV adaptation. My excited anticipation was not disappointed, and since then I have probably seen this little gem 25 times, often screening it for high school students, who watch in rapt fascination. The plot is amazing -- as only GG could concoct -- and I am still convinced this is Hopkins's best performance. Also superb are Kristin Scott Thomas, Derek Jacobi, Cyril Cusack and Brenda Bruce. Production values are strong if not stellar (after all, it's made for TV). Too bad this film is all but unavailable -- you'll have to buy a used VHS online if you want to see it; but you won't be sorry.

In Nazi-occupied France, a well-to-do businessman is imprisoned by chance and trades all his money and possessions to another prisoner in order to escape execution. Once released, he travels back to his old home and there encounters the bitter family of the man who took his place...

It's a good distance from the perfection of The Third Man, but this largely-forgotten TV adaptation is still a thoroughly engrossing story, much better than the great majority of cinema releases in a similar vein. It's better early on, and ends a little weakly, but all the turns of the plot keep you watching.

Anthony Hopkins is truly first rate, and the script is fine, even if the camerawork, music, direction and general production values are strictly from a 1980s made-for-TV movie. All the other actors are solid, although the young Kristin Scott-Thomas, not yet fully-formed, is slightly miscast as a working class woman with a continually appearing and disappearing amateur dramatics cockerney accent.

With more money, time and care, this could have been just as much a classic as The Remains of The Day or The English Patient, but even as it is, it still remains one of the better adaptations of Greene's work.

A typical Graham Greene story, with many human factors, many human weaknesses, many human lies and many strange turns in a very human story. Anthony Hopkins is a very ordinary citizen, a very bourgeouis lawyer, well off with a chateau-like house outside Paris, working in Paris, when he goes in to town to work in 1940 gets rounded up by the Gestapo and put in prison on a waiting list for death. Although he shouldn't, he survives three years in that prison, while several of his fellow prisoners have been shot. He looks up the sister of one of them, Kristin Scott Thomas, and they become very good friends, until there is Derek Jacobi, who turns out to be a collaborator with the Germans, trying to take Kristin Scott Thomas for himself, which of course Anthony Hopkins can't quite accept. Perhaps the flaw of the story is its very human weakness, predominant in almost all of Graham Greene's novels. Here he should have told Thomas the real truth from the beginning and reveal who Jacobi really was, which he didn't which results in the consequences. It's perfect acting, a great human drama, a beautiful film and above all with wonderful music by Lee Holdridge, ideal film music for this kind of film. It is both one of Anthony Hopkins' and Kristin Scott Thomas' best performances in very delicate and tricky parts, she always does well in France, and this film and story is all French and very French. It's about the resistance in the war, the German tyranny, the intricate psychology of freedom fighters and collaborators, the son of Max Ophuls once made a very explicit film about this, clearing it all up in a unique documentary, while this film only touches on the problems and is focussed on the human factors. In brief, no Graham Greene admirer or reader of his books could be disappointed by this splendid feature on quite an intimate and chamber music level.

Anthony Hopkins stars with Kristin Scott Thomas, Derek Jacobi, Brenda Bruce, and Timothy Watson in "The Tenth Man," an adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene.

During World War II, an attorney in Pris, Jean Louis Chavel (Hopkins) is picked up on the street by the Nazis and thrown in a group prison with other men. It's part of a routine roundup. Wrong place, wrong time.

The men are informed that three of them will be executed in the morning because of some French malfeasance. The group is to choose who will be killed. The prisoners rip up a letter and mark three with an X. They then each draw a piece of paper from a shoe.

When Chavel draws a paper with an X, he panics, and offers 100,000 francs to anyone who will take his place. The men laugh. How could anyone enjoy the money from there? However, one man, Michel Mangeot (Watson) is interested. He has a bad cough, and at this point, would rather die than stay in horrible conditions.

Chavel offers him 300,000 francs and his country home. He signs everything over to Mangeot. Mangeot then writes a will, witnessed by two prisoners, and leaves everything to his sister and mother.

Three years later, the war over, Chavel is a free man. He is a man with nothing and must beg on the street. He walks to his old house. There he sees Therese, Mangeot's sister. She is used to hobos coming to the house for food and offers him some. He gives her a fake name.

Chavel then realizes the deep hatred Therese and her mother have for this Chavel, a coward who let their brother die. Therese's dream is that she will meet him and spit in his face. Then she intends to kill him.

Needing help with the house and grounds, she has Chavel stay and work for her. Over time, an attraction develops. Then one night, during a storm, there is a frantic knock at the door. The man (Derek Jacobi) identifies himself as Jean Louis Chavel.

Normally I take these things for what they are, but I did wonder how Chavel managed to live imprisoned over the next three years, and also if anyone else was executed.

This film serves as a reminder of several things - committing something one perceives as a bad deed does not make the person bad, everyone has good and bad in them, and hatred that is allowed to fester cannot bring any happiness.

Hopkins is fantastic as a terrified man who has no understanding of what's happened to him. Through his performance, one really feels the horror of being picked up and taken from your life for no reason.

Kristin Scott Thomas beautifully portrays a lonely, angry, bitter woman who has isolated herself from the world.

The production values are good.

"The Tenth Man" is truly a gem that deserves a DVD release. It is a powerful film.