Raffles, gentleman cambrioleur

If ever there was a film that should have been a lot better, it is the 1940 version of "Raffles" - excellently cast is David Niven as the Gentleman cracksman, and with Olivia de Havilland (at her loveliest) as his girl-friend Gwen, with two excellent supporting players in Dame May Whitty and Dudley Digges. Lasting only just over an hour, it misses a wonderful opportunity to make something really exciting and suspenseful, but on those scores it fails. The predictability of it is a real let-down, and really the talent of the two main stars are wasted - Miss de Havilland has absolutely nothing to do except sit around and look gorgeous - she must have been forced by Warners to do this on loan out, because it followed so soon after her big success in "Gone With The Wind".

"Raffles" seems like it was a quickie - it doesn't last very long and it has an abrupt ending. Nevertheless, "Raffles" features two dazzling stars - David Niven, well-cast as an upper class thief, and Olivia de Havilland as the beautiful object of his affections.

One interesting thing about this film - which made me realize that I had seen it years before - is the early television in the inspector's office at the beginning of the movie.

I regret not seeing the Ronald Colman version. In this one, Niven is charming, handsome, and debonair as a man who seems to steal as a lark and then somehow returns the merchandise, to the frustration of the police. At the film's start, he steals a valuable painting, sends it to his favorite retired actress, and has her return it for the reward money. But when he tries to steal a necklace to help a friend replace money he gambled away before an audit takes place, he runs into another crook attempting to do the same thing, and complications arise.

There are some suspenseful moments toward the end of the movie, but all in all, it goes by too quickly, and the character of Raffles isn't sufficiently developed. It's almost as if the movie starts in the middle and ends before it's really over. De Havilland is absolutely beautiful, even if a couple of her hats are outrageous. She's really just doing an average ingénue role here. "Raffles" debuted in the U.S. just before "Gone With the Wind," and she probably made it right afterward.

Entertaining but disappointing.

A gentleman jewel thief who routinely baffles Scotland Yard decides to retire. This is because the thief - really A.J. Raffles, famous cricketer - has fallen in love with a girl called Gwen and has vowed to end his career of safe-cracking. However, when his friend Bunny is unable to pay off his debts, Raffles decides to help by stealing Lady Melrose's necklace. He manages to wangle an invitation to a weekend party she is hosting at her estate and anticipates an easy success. However, Inspector McKenzie attends the party to prevent the theft and another burglary is set to go down the same night...

Today, we're in an era of Hollywood studios remaking films which aren't yet twenty years old. Well, this one certainly kicks them to the curb. This is a remake of a nine-year old film from the same country, same studio, same director and same script. And, as David Niven replaces Ronald Colman, it could even have the same moustache too. But, this isn't a criticism. For one thing, in 1939, they didn't have DVDs (imagine!), so it had been nearly a decade since people had seen the first film. Also, this has David Niven. Also, this has David Niven. Also, this has ... well, it does.

Niven was born to play the role and it's a shame that he didn't make a bigger splash with it. This could easily have been a series, like the Universal set of Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone. Of course, the war happened and Niven, quite honourably, left Hollywood to fight. And maybe the idea would have been redundant, as this was the same year in which the Saint movies started (George Sanders, by the way, did his best to avoid the draft). With his easy charm and suavity, Niven is the best thing about this version. The plot is solid and - though set in a house for most of its run-time - features much of the cosily exciting wandering-around-the-house-at-night stuff that I love so much. It heads towards farce, at points, but you won't read me complaining about that, as it's all so lightly amusing and even quickens the pulse at times. Dame May Whitty (she of The Lady Vanishes - surely one of the best films in the history of moving pictures) plays the dowager-type part of Lady Melrose and there's some mild comedy to be enjoyed with her oafish aristocratic husband who is straight out of a Blandings novel.

The whole thing about giving Raffles a love-interest is non-canonical, as that never happened in the original stories by E.W. Hornung (brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle). In fact, Raffles himself is softer here than he is supposed to be and Bunny's suicide pledge is only alluded to, while it was properly depicted in the story which inspired it. At this point, the character had enjoyed a renaissance of sorts in the British pulp magazine The Thriller, with stories written by Barry Perowne, in which the character was updated to the '30s. This film is also set in those times (though, confusingly, there's a scene in a Victorian hansom cab) and there's even a television, before the invention was really popular.

Unfortunately, this spirited film is marred by a hasty ending which, jarringly, tries to include a daring escape, a Golden Age of Hollywood romantic ending and the obligatory reminder that crime does not pay.

The character would again find success in a 1977 television series for ITV with Anthony Valentine in the role. A one-off adaptation, titled The Gentleman Thief, was aired in 2001 and starred Nigel Havers. It was a role he was surely also born to play but, unfortunately, was not followed up on, and hasn't even had a DVD release. Considering the original books are still in print and remain classics of the genre, it would be great to see them adapted again at some point.

David Niven is a gentleman thief who gets caught in a bind when a Scotland Yard inspector catches up with him. Olivia deHavilland costars as his romantic interest. Interesting premise, deeply flawed execution.

David Niven is perfectly cast in the role, but the pacing of the moving is painfully slow, and it just drags on and feels so much longer than its 75-ish minute length. I think the big problem is that Niven's character next to no reason for actually being a thief, so we're dragged along on escapades that don't really seem to have much point.

And then there is Olivia deHavilland, who was criminally underused in this film, to the point that she could have been completely written out and you wouldn't miss her. This movie had so much promise, and it just fell flat. I still prefer the 1930 film with Ronald Colman in the title role. It was a very fluid early talkie.

I'm an great admirer of the Raffles books. E W Hornung was a better writer than the more famous Arthur Conan Doyle, his more famous brother in law. The stories were very well constructed,characters well-defined and deserved classics. This is a thin lazy adaptation, combining of several of the stories losing a great deal of what was important. It is though a scene by scene and largely word for word re-make of the superior 1930 Ronald Colman version.

One, and perhaps the, reason for the remake seemed obvious to me. The 1930 version was too steamy and too suggestive for 1939. When Ronald Colman courteously escorts the large and elderly Lady Melrose to her bedroom and wishes her goodnight, Lady Melrose affects to mishear and Colman repeats with great emphasis the finality of NIGHT!. It is made very clear from their expressions that Lady Melrose was hoping Colman would join her. It think it was not perhaps until the 1970s that Hollywood would again dare suggest such a thing. Colman's love interest is clearly passionately besotted with him and would do anything for him. It was realism but of a kind which Hollywood would I think never portray again. Firstly Hayes Code prudery and later the box office obligation to show women as heroic and independent.

The adaptation removes Bunny's connection with Raffles (formerly a junior at Raffles public (fee paying) school and the odd obligations this entailed. Bunny in this version has little purpose. Raffles was the ultimate professional thief and corrupts Bunny and in the process teaches him (and the reader) his philosophy of life and crime. His cricket was a calculated necessary high profile front. Raffles lived alone without a servant - his night time arrivals and departures, often in disguise made that obligatory

As other reviewers have said, Niven makes a good job of his part but only Olivia de Havillands loveliness makes the film at all watchable.

The best screen rendering of the Raffles was a 1975 British TV series - again combining different stories but a seamlessly invisible adaptation. The interiors were those of a wealthy single gentleman of 1890s London - based on gentleman's clubs. Raffles, Bunny and McKenzie were authentically true to the books. It did Hornung honour. BBC Radio has done two versions (at least), first a reading and second a full production complete with distinctive signature tune.

Thanks once again to Talking Pictures TV for screening these famous early Raffles versions. Otherwise I would never have known of them.