Première désillusion

"The Fallen Idol" builds on a classic situation of English children's literature--the lonely rich kid from overseas in the big house left with hired caregivers-- to create a masterful suspense tale that deftly examines truths and half-truths, lies and white lies from the boy's confused perspective.

Based on Graham Greene's short story "The Basement Room", the film builds on the look of Hitchcock's "Rebecca", with a house as visually significant as Manderlay, plus fraught with Lillian Hellman's sophisticated view of childhood as in "These Three". Key is not just Georges Périnal's enthralling story, but the stunning direction by Carol Reed in how he uses gorgeous black and white cinematography from both a memorable interior and a London that ranges from scary night to a misleadingly bright daylight that is equally full of secrets, as seen in a new 35 MM print at NYC's Film Forum.

The beautiful production design is dominated by a gorgeous staircase in the ambassador's residence that has to rank with one of the all time movie centerpieces as in "Gone With The Wind", and is as central for the first and last third of the film as the Rear Window in another Hitchcock film. Reed has the camera go up and down those heavily symbolic stairs as a shared link from the main floors that are the busy public areas, down to the basement servant quarters then up and up to the private residential areas, with overlooking balconies and windows that are key for spying on each level. The staircase sets up several dramatic events (adding layers to the film's title), climaxing in a notable scene of the incredibly tense voyage of a child's innocent-seeming paper airplane that carries a significant clue slowly, slowly traversing that vertical no-man's/everyman's land from the top to the bottom, as we hold our breath where it will land.

Throughout the film, the complex world of adult relationships and interactions is seen through the eyes of a child (the wonderfully natural, lively, lisping Bobby Henrey - who now lives in Connecticut and did a Q & A at the Film Forum I didn't attend) so that childish activities take on ironic or double meanings of freedom or dread, between appearances and reality, from a good night story, to a game of hide and seek, to a picnic, to running away, to an idyll at the zoo that one would assume inspired Rowling for a key scene in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone". Throughout the film, the boy constantly misunderstands what he is seeing - sometimes he sees the truth, sometimes he doesn't, sometimes he only sees part of the truth, as the adults alternate in advising him to lie or don't lie.

The young Ralph Richardson is absolutely marvelous as he switches from father substitute to hen-pecked husband (Sonia Dresdel as his wife recalls Agnes Moorhead), to relaxed lover, to efficient butler.

While this new print revival is being distributed as a forgotten masterpiece, my parents vividly remembered seeing it first run in their neighborhood Brooklyn movie theater and that it was quite popular. I presume that the same team's next work on the masterpiece "The Third Man" overshadowed this gem in film history, but also perhaps because this film doesn't end on quite the cynicism that a contemporary audience expects from their work.

When the great directors of film are named these days, the incomparable Carol Reed is rarely mentioned. He has been completely surpassed in the public esteem by his British contemporary David Lean. After the success of Reed's English films, a period which began in 1940 with the coal-mining film "The Stars Look Down" and ended with "The Outcast of the Islands" in 1954, the director was discovered by the big Hollywood studios; he went on to direct a number of big-budgeted Technicolor international productions –-"Olivier," "The Agony and the Ecstasy," and "Trapeze"—all of which he handled with consummate professionalism, but somehow their box-office success unfairly diminished his reputation with the critics. He is perhaps best remembered today for "The Third Man," which many people erroneously think Orson Welles directed. Although Reed's early films were shot in London films studios and on location all around the word, they remain quintessentially British in understated mood and attack --B&W films made in collaboration with the best expatriate talent that had gathered in London during the war years. ("The Fallen Idol" is photographed by the French cinematographer Perinal, the Jugoslavian editor Hafenrichter, and the Hungarian set designer Vincent Korda.) Reed at his best has the unique ability to portray the most complex of human relationships with voices lowered; witness how masterfully he directs the detectives and suspects in the final reels of this superb film.

Fallen Idol is a great film, with all actors in fine form, especially Ralph Richardson, and including the boy. Richardon is the embassy butler married to a shrewish, domineering wife. He has an illicit, albeit discreet love affair with a beautiful young embassy secretary - you can't help but feel for them both. When the shrew is found done in by a fall down the ornate embassy staircase, the wonderful gentlemen detective types enter, ever so politely, of course. Fallen Idol is an example of the best of British movie-making: low key, sympathetic, civilized. The boy's pet snake is a nice touch. A gem; a good example of the type of fine film that I wish could be made more available here. A Graham Greene story, directed by Carol Reed - what more could we want. Another great Carol Reed 'lost' film is 'Outcast of the Islands', also with Ralph Richardson.

Was there ever a more civilized treatment of infidelity than this British suspenser. Ralph Richardson's butler Baines is the very last word in polished civility and stiff upper lip no matter how extreme the provocation. Yet he's so unfailingly kind and considerate to the boy Phillipe that he's among the most admirable of transgressors. The bond between the lonely son of the French ambassador and the hen-pecked English butler is memorably touching and the emotional heart of the film.

Director Carol Reed has basically a single set to work with. But it's a great one with the sweeping staircase, high domed ceiling, and checkerboard tiles, all keeping the eye entertained at the same time the sinister events unfold. Those events are driven by poor Sonia Dresdel who has the thankless role of the cruel wife and housekeeper Mrs. Baines that she plays to the hilt. You just know from the start that Phillipe's pet garter snake, MacGregor, is doomed in her bleak household. In fact, the screenplay has loaded the deck by making her such an unsympathetic figure. Who can blame Baines for his covert rendezvous with the lovely Julie (Michelle Morgan) when his shrewish wife remains in the empty embassy waiting to pounce.

What really distinguishes the movie is its skill at viewing adult actions through the eyes of the child. Thus, instead of a conventional two-shot close-up of Baines and Julie in intimate conversation, Reed gives us a three-shot from the perspective of Phillipe as he watches them. We may know what's up with them, but we also share the boy's puzzlement over a world he has yet to grow into. We share that perspective throughout, which is not only an unusual one, but visually reinforces the touching bond between the child of the elite and the highly polished commoner. It also turns the emotional climax (not the dramatic) into a memorably revealing one-- a rite of passage, as it were.

Anyway, in my little book, the movie qualifies as a genuine classic, placing Carol Reed in the same Pantheon as contemporary British masters Hitchcock and Michael Powell. Once you see it, you don't forget it.

Worth it just for that last shot of the little boy on the stairs, whose mother has just come home and is calling to him. Exquisitely crafted--beautifully acted, written, directed, and filmed. They don't make films like this anymore. When you see something like this you realize that intelligence has really left cinema.