L'étranger dans la maison

This is an odd choice of Simenon novel to adapt into a film. It provides for a good role for James Mason as the drunkard solicitor "Sawyer" - a bright, intelligent operator who has hits the skids somewhat after his wife abandoned him, and he became oddly estranged from his daughter "Angela" (an effective, almost aloof Geradine Chaplin), with whom he shares a home. Otherwise, the rest of the roles are weak, wet even. When her boyfriend "Jo" (Paul Bertoya) is accused of a murder, "Sawyer" determines to raise his game and defend the young man. To be fair, this is a small tour de force for the star, who does deliver well. The rest of the story borders on the facile. The collective surrounding "Angela" - a bunch of wealthy no-hope wasters with Bobby Darin and a very dapper looking Ian Ogilvy, are thoroughly disengaging and but for a suitably grumpy performance from James Hayter as chief magistrate "Hawkins" one could reasonably be forgiven for reaching for the fast forward button. The ending, doubtless a superlative piece of deduction from Mason is almost irrelevant - by this point I really couldn't care less about any of the characters and, indeed, may well have reached for a glass myself (it's not yet 10am, so perhaps not!). At best it's a mediocre short story that has little enough to sustain it for the viewer, sorry.

Georges Simenon's 1940 novel "A Stranger in the House", rechristened "Cop-Out" for the American market and transferred to Swinging Southampton, (yes, Southampton), in the sixties was the only film to be directed by the writer and producer Pierre Rouve. It's really quite atrocious despite a cast headed by James Mason, Geraldine Chaplin and, again for the American market, Bobby Darin. Mason is the drunken former barrister who comes out of retirement to defend daughter Chaplin's boyfriend, (newcomer Paul Bertoya who, despite his good-looks, quickly disappeared from the scene), on a charge of murdering Darin. For some reason, Rouve took the 'arty' approach rather than the conventional one and the film's all the worse for it, working neither as a drama nor a thriller. It's badly acted, (even by Mason), badly directed and the denouement, delivered Poirot-style at a twenty-first birthday party, is jaw-droppingly awful. Often thought of as a 'lost' movie, this one would have been better staying lost.

This is an interesting crime drama starring the ever dependable James Mason as John Sawyer, an alcoholic former lawyer. He lives with his only daughter Angela (Geraldine Chaplin), but they don't get on. One night a body is found in their house, it's the body of Barney Teale (Bobby Darin), a nasty piece of work who Angela knows. Chief suspect is Jo Christoforides (Paul Bertoya), Angela's boyfriend who has had a previous altercation with Barney. Also in the frame is Desmond Flower (Ian Ogilvy), an oily wealthy youth who John knows. Mason is excellent as the alcoholic lawyer and is ably assisted by a mainly young cast of which Chaplin does the best job.

He had a very distinguished career.It is sad that his last credit was this abysmal effort. It wastes the talent of James Mason.The whodunnit plot is tricked up with the worst excesses of sixties film making.Even worse the film ends with a whimper.

Always on the look-out for appealingly slinky, stylishly shot, swingingly sixties cinematic eccentricity, Pierre Rouve's long-neglected, delightfully downbeat kitchen sink murder mystery 'Stranger in The House' is, perhaps, one of the more obscure thrillers ripe for rediscovery. The exciting, twist-laden tale take place in a rather dismal-looking Southampton, and the rather more grand, historical city of Winchester. This fascinating, tautly-written whodunnit, adapted from mystery master Georges Simenon abounds with some delightfully vivid performances, with the inimitable James Mason being especially beguiling as the boozy, self-isolating Dickensian curmudgeon John Sawyer, estranged from his daughter Angela (Geraldine Chaplin), wholly isolated, his wife long gone, the aged misanthropic barrister's austere, depressively gloomy, drab descent into inevitable redundancy almost complete, when, quite unexpectedly, a murder is committed in his sprawling, greatly dilapidated town house, thereby acting as a violent catalyst, forced out of his fuzzy, ethanol-hazed inertia, the once successful barrister takes on the murky case, somewhat reluctantly defending his daughter's lover, the bizarre events leading to the fatality, no less maddeningly obscure to him than his daughter's altogether alien personal life.

Pierre Rouve's engrossing 'Stranger in the House' is that rare cinematic artefact, a bona fide film classic, rescued from unwarranted obscurity, beautifully restored to pristine quality to enthral an audience of film fans hitherto unaware that such a finely wrought thriller ever existed. Another intriguing aspect to Rouve's exemplary thriller is Bobby Darin's deliciously unhinged performance as the magnificently malevolent, diabolically duplicitous deadbeat Barney Teale!