Le bouc émissaire

This movie has such an interesting premise, I almost don't want to tell you about it. As it unfolds, the twists and turns will keep you on your toes from start to finish. Let's start off with the least surprising part of the movie: Alec Guinness plays dual roles. He loves disguises, so it's no wonder he was drawn to The Scapegoat. One Alec Guinness is wealthy, titled, living in luxury with a wife, stepdaughter, and mistress. The other is an inconsequential college professor with apathy for everything in his life. When one Alec keeps getting mistaken for the other, he's confused. When he finally sees his own reflection looking back at him from across the bar, he gets to know the man he might have been. It's very fun, with trick camera angles, and reminds us of all the eight roles he played in Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Well, I've made up my mind: I won't tell you the plot. All you need to know is that it's a tense thriller with two Alec Guinnesses. This is far from an Ealing comedy, so don't expect to laugh. There is one sad part to the movie, one you should be aware of if you're a Bette Davis fan and don't want to see her in her Baby Jane phase. She plays a bedridden morphine addict, and her over-the-top acting style is as out of place in the late '50s as it was in the '60s. I prefer to see her in her prime, but it was still great to see Alec playing his two parts. Check it out!

As part of a birthday celebration of the late Sir Alec, TCM placed this seldom shown character study in between two hilarious Guinness farces, "Hotel Paradiso" and "All at Sea." In combination with "The Malta Story," "Scapegoat" allowed Guiness to indulge both his more serious dramatic inclinations as well as play another double role, something for which he was a master. His "Kind Hearts and Coronets" is the tour de force of this genre of multiple identities.

This adaptation of Du Maurier's novel has also the advantage of five strong female leads, three of them, Bette Davis, Irene Worth and Pamela Brown, known in their own right for their dramatic achievement. Actually, all of the supporting roles are excellently cast, even to the faithful manservant, Gaston, and especially the count's precocious and very articulate daughter.

Bette Davis, as the matriarch, sets the tone for neurotic tyranny in this family; but it is a role that could have been less of a caricature if Dame Wendy Hiller had played it instead (See Dame Wendy in "Murder on the Orient Express" for the epitome of "noblesse oblige.") In the role of the wife, Irene Worth gains some of our sympathy as the high-strung and beautiful, sensitive but persecuted spouse unable to give the count a male heir. Her mobile and expressive face is a perfect foil to Guiness's stoic reserve.

As the count's sister, Pamela Brown's natural reticence and grave air, her huge luminous eyes and rich voice (which can be savored in an earlier role in "I Know Where I'm going") made her a likely choice in the role of a sibling, however, the differences she shares with her brother are not resolved nor explained, neither is her motivation for being so antagonistic toward him. In other words, through the eliptical, somewhat ambiguous dialogue, there is a history or subtext of sibling rivalry of which we must remain ignorant. (Perhaps the novel delineated this more clearly.)

Despite the strong and balanced cast, I found the ending a surprise and a slight disappointment. For me it failed to resolve Guiness's relationship with the other females save one, his lover. Therefore, despite the putative attempt to plumb his character, it remained an identity problem hardly more than skin deep. Still, all in all, it is a fascinating attempt and a rare chance to see Guinness in a noncombative drama with strong females, somewhat like a diamond set among a ruby, emerald and pearl.

Of four stars, definitely a strong three*** for the excellent cast.

"The Scapegoat" starts out with a clever premise and the promise of intrigue, but soon settles down as a character study marked by good, solid acting. Alec Guinness is the star with a dual role, first as a drab professor with an empty life, and then as the scion of a wealthy family who parties, womanizes and neglects his family. They meet and decide to switch places. The professor now has a life, but the rich guy vanishes.

Now follows an absorbing story, based on a novel by Daphne DuMaurier, as the professor enjoys his new surroundings and tries to inject some heart and purpose into his new life, which arouses some suspicions. This may have been a novella fleshed out to a feature-length movie, and I say this because the picture does go on, and the pace is somewhat sluggish - that is, until the surprise ending.

Guinness, Irene Worth and Nicole Maurey put this British/MGM film over with superb acting, with an enlarged cameo by Bette Davis. "The Scapegoat" is something of a departure for Alec Guinness as he gets to show off his considerable acting chops, and there are no comic interludes to be found. The viewer is kept in the dark regarding a solution until the very end, and the end is worth the preceding 90 minutes.

Based on a Daphne du Maurier source-text, THE SCAPEGOAT is very much in the tradition established by Hamer's more famous earlier film KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949), also starring Guinness. In this film Guinness plays two roles; that of a mild-mannered university teacher whose identity is stolen by a rakish French aristocrat. The university teacher takes over the aristocrat's life, and proves rather good at it; so much so that he does not want to recover his old life when the aristocrat asks him to. The climax is a violent one. Hamer's film, although set in France, takes a particularly English approach to death; the performances are quietly understated, and the atmosphere of menace restrained. Bette Davis seems rather out of place in a cameo role as the aristocrat's mother; her grande dame performance, complete with rolling New England vowels, contrasts starkly with that of Guinness. The ending is a bit peremptory, betraying the fact that THE SCAPEGOAT was not without its production difficulties, especially when scriptwriter Gore Vidal had to deal with an increasingly alcoholic director. Nonetheless THE SCAPEGOAT is definitely worth a view, if only for Guinness' versatility as an actor.

Provincial University professor from England chances to meet his diabolical, selfish twin while on vacation in Paris. Daphne Du Maurier's novel gets a highly polished screen-treatment, with star Alec Guinness very fine in the dual role, the split-screen photography and editing pulled off with skill. After being tricked into assuming the French nobleman's eccentric life, the teacher finds himself settling well into this new role as a business tycoon and family man--until his glinty-eyed look-alike returns. Bette Davis has a small but important, amusing role as a dowager Countess, and there's also a wreck of a wife, a wise little girl, a loyal chauffeur, and an Italian mistress. Gore Vidal worked on the adaptation, and the literate script is absorbing yet constricting for the teacher-character (he can only attempt to explain so much without throwing the whole plot off-course). There's a lot of talk in the early stages that the Count is delusional and perhaps schizophrenic, all of which is quickly dropped once the teacher assumes his life. Still, it's a smartly-planned movie, one without hysterics or false dramatics. Guinness seems a bit uncomfortable at times, though this may have been intentional and is acceptable behavior here. A very entertaining film with some weak or disappointing passages, but just as many adept ones and a satisfying finish. *** from ****