Os Bons Morrem Cedo

Coming to this with neutral expectations, and fresh from seeing Harvey in 'Room at the Top' for the umpteenth time, I was quite surprised to find it watchable, with lots of interesting facets and a cast who complement each other well. Baker (an actor whose work seems to be undergoing some appraisal at film festivals lately) gives some dignity to the down-on-his-luck prizefighter; Harvey convincingly plays an upper-class slimeball alternatively charming and terrorising his wife (interesting played by Margaret Leighton, who would become Mrs Harvey in real life), sparring with the father who despises him, and poisoning his 'friends' lives like a devious snake. Ireland, as the bitter GI with a film star wife flaunting her infidelities each time he comes home from leave, is effective, while Basehart, with a weedy wife and an overbearing mother-in-law, puts across his frustations nicely. So much for characterisation. The film is mainly taken up with a series of flashbacks, showing how the four men find themselves in the situation we see them in at the start. Once it moves back into the present, it feels rushed and the final moralistic voiceover almost kills it. Amongst the other players, Joan Collins as Basehart's wife doesn't do much besides pout and look pretty, while Gloria Grahame as the film actress manages to be simply irritating. All things considered, the film isn't a total success but has enough going on to keep you there with it.

An attempt by the British to make a noirish thriller in the American style and it almost pays off. It's strong on atmosphere, with some superb nighttime photography, and it has an outstanding cast even if some of them are not at their best. It's both an heist movie and a character study that delves into the lives and backgrounds of the criminals on the job, by way of flashbacks.

They are Laurence Harvey, Stanley Baker, (both very good), Richard Basehart and John Ireland, (less so), and their women include a young and highly inadequate Joan Collins, Gloria Grahame, (winging it), and a marvelous Margaret Leighton who plays the woman who is married to Harvey and who keeps him and who was also married to him in real life.

The serviceable Lewis Gilbert directs with real flair. Gilbert never made the front ranks yet many of his films were surprisingly entertaining and well-made. This is one of them.

A well crafted heist thriller of the old school with the message of crime doesn't pay about a quartet of ne'er-do-wells who's stories are told in flashbacks then culminates in the daring crime which in turns leads to divisions amongst them.The leader is Miles(Rave)Ravenscourt(Laurence Harvey)who's at his gleefully sneering best with a host of well known faces(Baker,Basehart&John Ireland,there's also a young Joan Collins as Basehart's wife along with Gloria Grahame who's wonderful as a spoilt married woman to one of the gang.Full of action towards the end especially the underground scenes,the cast includes Margaret Leighton who was Harvey's real life wife.

To understand the impact one particular quote from this movie had on me, you need to know that I first saw it at an 'Astra' cinema in the 1950s, while serving in the RAF.

In a scene early on in the film, John Ireland, a sergeant in the USAF, is accusing his wife, played by Gloria Grahame, of infidelity. She turns to him with self-righteous indignation and says (as only she can) :"Eddie, your time in the Air Force has coarsened your mind."

It shouldn't be difficult to imagine how, in front of an audience comprising a couple of hundred airmen, that one line brought the house down!

That apart, this is quite a decent crime caper movie, with some similarities to The League of Gentlemen (1959), but without the humorous touches.The only blemish is the usual wooden performance from Laurence Harvey. (How on earth did that man get so many leading roles in both British and American productions?)

Harvey apart, the acting is of a high standard. Stanley Baker is particularly impressive as the broken down prizefighter and Richard Basehart and John Ireland (the two token Yanks in British minor movies of the fifties) give excellent support as the other two conspirators. The young Joan Collins is ravishing as the wife any man would rob a dozen banks for and Freda Jackson is outstanding as her manipulating witch of a mother. Gloria Grahame is (of course) brilliant as the femme fatale and there is a delightful cameo from Robert Morley as the villain's father.

What a sizzling lead performance in this superb British noir film by Larry Harvey! And what a terrible irony in the title, since Larry died at the age of only 45 in 1973. I remember him so well on the day walking in Hampstead with his little daughter Domino that he told me he was dying of stomach cancer. I asked him if he were certain, if there were not something 'they could do', but he merely looked at me with his ironical smile, a resigned one, and said no, he was dying. His nonchalance did not desert him. He shrugged it off sadly but with his ingrained insouciance. His reaction to his own imminent demise had no self-pity in it, but was full of pathos, as he regretted that he would not be able to watch Domino grow up. Alas, she too has now gone. He also worried about what would happen to Paulene, who is still as glamorous as she was then. But how sadly some meet their ends. Gloria Grahame, who also sizzles in this film, only lived to 58, and Stanley Baker only made it to 48. So yes, the good die young. But Joan Collins, ostensibly only 21 at the time (but already in her ninth feature film role!), is still with us and currently working on her 119th film! This film, brilliantly directed by Lewis Gilbert (and I noted that Jack Clayton, himself later to be such a brilliant director, is credited here as Associate Producer), is a terrific psychological study of how a group of desperate men can come together to commit a crime which they would otherwise never commit. Their individual stories are all fully sketched by a cast of wonderful pros. The four men are Richard Baseheart, John Ireland, and Stanley Baker, led by the mischievous, amoral, and as it turns out, probably psychotic, Larry Harvey, as the character known as 'Rave'. The devilish, pathological scheming of 'Rave' is brilliantly shown, and in the scenes towards the end of the film, Larry is positively terrifying. Robert Morley has a brief look-in which he slightly overdoes, but then he always had a propensity to overact, especially with the excessive widening of his eyes at crucial moments. Gloria Grahame does a wonderful job of playing a lascivious, 'gorgeous pouting', totally amoral movie starlet married to the long-suffering John Ireland. Ireland doesn't know whether he wants to kiss or to strangle her, as she is so exasperating but also so irresistible. And it was not only Ireland who found her so, but a large part of the Western world. Gloria Grahame certainly had 'that something', and more besides. The most polished performance in the film is probably that by Margaret Leighton, who later married Larry in 1957 (they divorced four years later). In the film she anticipates later true events by playing Larry's older wife. She is so insouciant and acts with such effortless ease that it is like watching olive oil coat the lens. In between Margaret Leighton's arched eyebrows there lurked a great deal of intelligence, a fine sense of humour, and an appreciation of irony. The stories behind the individual characters in this film are harrowing, and Joan Collins as an emotional prisoner of her harridan mother is particularly typical of the time. In those days, girls really did feel unable to leave their mothers and were easily emotionally blackmailed by them, whereas today the young are so indifferent to lasting attachments that a parent is merely another avatar in a video game, to be tossed aside when convenient. The central character remains the spoilt, narcissistic, pleasure-loving and wholly irresponsible 'Rave', who suffers from that condition known to psychologists as 'infantile omnipotence', and who reacts to the word 'No!' with a violent tantrum. The botched burglary and its aftermath is painful to watch, but I dare not say whether any of the vexed situations which drove the participants into it are resolved, for that would give away too much. Certainly, this is one of the finer British efforts in this genre during the 1950s.