Faces in the Dark

This taut little gem was on British television last night - January 23rd 2010 - on the Film 24 channel, which has been treating old movie fans to some really obscure titles recently including two other John Gregson films ' To Dorothy A Son ' and ' SOS Pacific '.

I have now recorded it in case it's another 50 years before it turns up! It's got a very dark, disturbing ending for a British film made in 1959, no doubt because of it's French literary origins.

While it's definitely worth thriller & mystery lovers spending 90 minutes of their time, the sudden disappearance of John Ireland ( who adopts a pretty good English accent as Gregsons ner-do-well brother ) mid-way through the film, is the biggest mystery of all.

I believe he was making the TV action series " The Cheaters " in London at the same time so maybe he had to bow out of " Faces In The Dark " because of other work commitments.

He didn't even have a dramatic death scene...suddenly he was gone and referred to as being dead! All these years later, we'll never know why an actor of his stature had such a minor role in the film,

Richard Hammond is injured badly in an accident at the company he owns. He is blinded and disfigured and isn't adapting to this well at all. He seems angry, on edge and is not a particularly noble blind man. So, it's easy not to like the man. However, over time you start to wonder if perhaps SOME of his anger is because something else is going on...something or someone is manipulating him...and what he seems to experience isn't exactly real...at least not what they tell him it is. What REALLY is going on here?!

This movie is unusual because an American actor, John Ireland is in it BUT doesn't play a very significant part. Now a lot of American actors went to Europe to make films during the 1950s and 60s....but they always starred in the films. This time, it seemed more like he was just working a day or two and that's all.

So is it any good? Generally yes...though the very end is a tad sloppy. You really have a hard time imagining the wife meeting her fate the way she did...it just seemed HIGHLY unlikely. Some might also dislike how vague parts of the ending is as well. Still, it is different...and I love different.

John Gregson plays a very unsympathetic character, a genius inventor at a firm for making bulbs, and he makes a breakthrough with a new revolutionary invention, but the laboratory explodes, and he loses his sight. Fortunately he is married to the always lovely but ambiguous Mai Zetterling, who takes well care of him with his main partner at the job by her side, but there is also John Ireland as his brother, a good-for-nothing always needing money, drinking and playing the piano and with a bad heart at that, for running too much after women. That's the set-up.

It's a cruel drama, almost nasty in character, Boileau-Narcejac are not quite convincing this time in their contrived intriguing but overdo it, while the main theme is the more interesting: a blind man finding himself not only groping in the darkness but finding that darkness growing ever thicker as his closest of kin are more and more lost to him. It starts on a very small level, he fails to recognize his cat, he finds himself smelling trees that weren't there, and he is not helped at all by his own very aggressive nature losing patience all the time. It's a story about darkness and loneliness that constantly grows worse, and the end isn't exactly any answer to his predicament.

The acting is perfect, the psychological realism is consistent, but there are flaws in the concrete story, just as in their other unsurprassed thrillers, like "Vertigo" and "Les diaboliques."

Like the preceding comment by JimShine illustrates, this movie is only half-good : an average-to-good acting job; and indeed the direction lacks energy and tension.

The strength that remains in this movie comes basically from its clever story, its suspenseful plot. The explanation is simple : it is adapted from a novel by Boileau-Narcejac! Voilà ! Of course ! For the sake of anecdote, let's remind the reader that the British publishers of Faces in the Dark / Les Visages de l'ombre (that was in the early 60s) asked Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac if they couldn't, by any chance, change the conclusive chapter because it was too dark. Well, if they called it 'Faces in the Dark', it must have been for some reason, bozo ! Like many people in the same trade, Boileau-Narcejac wrote and published too much. As a result, let's say MOST of their novels are at least enjoyable, SOME are pretty boring - especially the late ones, as often happens with thriller/suspense writers - and a solid DOZEN are masterpieces of suspense, atmospheric and chilling to the bone ! They also wrote an adorable jewel of the pastiche, 'Arsène Lupin : Le Secret d'Eunerville' which is a full-fledged Arsène Lupin novel better than some of the original ones written by Maurice Leblanc.

In fact, lots of people may know very well a couple of their stories without realizing it : H.G. Clouzot's Les Diaboliques and Alfred Hitchock's Vertigo were both adapted from a Boileau-Narcejac novel.

They also can be counted are among the rare true INVENTORS of the genre, because in the immediate postwar years, they decided to escape from both the whodunit (written from the point of view of the detective) and the noir (written from the point of view of the criminal) and decided instead to write their novels - a genuine breakthrough - from the point of view of the victim. And it is the case with Faces in the Dark, which could well be their most efficient suspense ever - but to know that, you have to read the book, for this movie adaptation, though acceptable, doesn't really do it justice. Reading 'Les Visages de l'ombre' is a really frightening experience (especially the conclusive chapter!), while watching this movie is at best intriguing.

In terms of the number of votes for this movie (mine is the 10th), this could be the most obscure film I'm ever seen! Which of course means nothing to you, but it does get me wondering about how some films survive the decades and others just vanish. Certainly there are many much worse ways of spending 80 minutes than watching "Faces in the Dark". On the very slim chance that you might get to see this movie, I won't spoil what was for me the most enjoyable aspect of it, which was speculating as to what would happen next: is it a horror film? a psychological drama? or what? Anyway, the basic plot is that the main character goes blind after an accident; he and his wife plus sundry other relevant persons take a break at their holiday home; and then strange things appear to happen. There are a few things wrong with this film, primarily the rather dull direction (it's not all told from the main character's POV, which deflates some of the tension), and I found John Gregson a little too gruff at times (I only know him from comedies, including, by the way, a film called Genevieve which is one of the most thoroughly entertaining movies I know). Some of the other acting is occasionally dodgy too. Overall, though, it held my interest up to the end, which is, I think, a good enough recommendation for any obscure movie!