O Homem de Cinzento

...and director Leslie Arliss. Clarissa Marr (Phyllis Calvert) is a young woman from a prominent family who is married off to Lord Rohan (James Mason). The cruel Lord only wants her to produce an heir, and otherwise leaves her to her own devices, especially once their son is born. Clarissa reconnects with a school acquaintance, Hesther Shaw (Margaret Lockwood), who had created a scandal with the way she had left. Hesther is now an itinerant actress, but Clarissa insists that she move in with her and become her companion. Hesther longs for the wealth and respectability that the Rohan name could give her, so she sets out to manipulate Clarissa's affections for an actor named Rokeby (Stewart Granger) in order to get her own hands on Lord Rohan. Also featuring Martita Hunt, Antony Scott, Helen Haye, Beatrice Varley, Raymond Lovell, and Nora Swinburne.

Released during the height of WW2, this period piece romantic melodrama became a surprise hit. The costumes and settings are finely wrought, particularly during a time of privation such as the war. Three of the lead performers are exceptionally good: Granger as the swaggering bon vivant Rokeby, Lockwood as the amoral scheming Hesther, and James Mason as the mercurial Rohan, who is at times detestable in every way, but rises to the ultimate occasion. Phyllis Calvert isn't bad either, but she's merely called on to be the innocent center around whom these other, showier, characters orbit. I enjoyed this movie quite a bit, especially the great ending crescendo, but there was one odious aspect that keeps my score lower. There's a character named Tobey, a black servant boy played by a white kid for no discernible reason. I'm also not even sure if he's supposed to be a kid or not, since he never changes, always looking like a 12 year old, despite years passing in the story. This character proves to be important to the plot, so he doesn't fade into the background as many insensitive characters do in films of the 30's and 40's. There's also some unfortunate dialogue related to this character. Yeah, it was a different time, but that doesn't make it anymore palatable. This is listed as one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

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.

"The Man in Grey" was the first of the "Gainsborough melodramas", a series of films made by Gainsborough Pictures; they generally had a period setting and a highly dramatic plot. They can be considered as "women's pictures" in that they were primarily aimed at a female audience. (During the war, with so many men serving in the Armed Forces, women made up the greater part of cinema audiences). Unlike many Hollywood "women's pictures" which revolved around a central female character, however, they often featured strong male characters in prominent leading roles.

The main action takes place during the Regency period, although this is set within the framework of a story set in 1943 and involving a romance between the modern descendants of the families featured in the Regency story. The "man in grey" of the title is Lord Rohan, a man notorious both for his debauched lifestyle and for his savage temper. (He has killed several men in duels). He marries Clarissa, a beautiful heiress, but theirs is a loveless marriage from the start. (He marries her partly for her fortune, partly to provide an heir to his family estates). They lead separate lives, and Clarissa falls in love with a handsome young actor named Rokeby. Rohan begins an affair with a scheming young woman named Hesther, who was a former school friend of Clarissa and an actress in the same troupe as Rokeby.

Some have drawn parallels between the four main characters in this drama with Ashley, Melanie, Scarlett and Rhett in "Gone with the Wind", who like Rokeby, Clarissa, Hesther and Rohan can be divided into "two good and two bad". It seemed to me, in fact, that the main influence on Eleanor Smith, the author of the novel on which the film is based, was Thackeray's "Vanity Fair". Apart from the Regency setting there are parallels between Hesther and Thackeray's Becky Sharp and between Clarissa and Becky's friend Amelia. One similarity with "Gone with the Wind" is that the "bad" characters are more memorable than the "good". We remember "Gone with the Wind" for Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable rather than Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland, and here it is James Mason and Margaret Lockwood who stand out more than Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger. (Of the four it was Lockwood who was the biggest star when the film was made; Mason and Granger, later to become big names in both Britain and Hollywood were young actors in the early part of heir career)'

Mason and Lockwood were later to star together in another Gainsborough melodrama, "The Wicked Lady", probably the best remembered of the series. In that film too, Lockwood played a beautiful but ruthless and amoral woman with a more innocent friend, and Mason played her lover. Her Hesther, like Becky Sharp, is from a lower social station than her friend and an ambitious social climber, although she is more evil than Becky, or for that matter Scarlett, ever knew how to be. Lockwood, however, did not only play villainesses; she was to play the heroine in "Jassy", a third Gainsborough melodrama.

Mason's Rohan is a particularly well-drawn character- a drinker, gambler, womaniser and brawler, an arrogant, cynical, dissolute libertine who never does an honourable thing and yet remains very touchy about his honour, so touchy that he is prepared to kill anyone whom he believes has dishonoured him. His family motto is "Who Dishonours Us, Dies." Lady Caroline Lamb's famous description of Lord Byron as "mad, bad and dangerous to know" could apply to Rohan- perhaps even better than it did to Byron.

Today, Gainsborough melodramas like this one and "The Wicked Lady" can come across as very dated and more than a little camp, with their exaggerated emotion, their exaggeratedly black-and-white view of the world and their exaggerated style of acting. Our tastes in Regency drama today tend more to quiet, well-mannered adaptations of that quiet, well-mannered author Jane Austen, someone whom the British cinema ignored altogether in the forties. (The only screen adaptation of her work from the period was the American-made "Pride and Prejudice"). Yet, if we can make allowances for lurid, blood-and-thunder plots and stylised, non-naturalistic acting, they can still yield plenty of entertainment. 7/10

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!