The Fallen Idol

The collaboration of Carol Reed and Graham Greene on The Third Man created a masterpiece, and it was foreshadowed by the fine The Fallen Idol, made in 1948. Reed directed Greene's script, based on his short story. It's a deceptively simple story involving only a few characters, but the psychological factors are still nagging at me twenty-four hours later.

The setting is the French embassy in London. The ambassador leaves for the weekend to pick up his wife, who has been ill for several months. He leaves behind his son, who is about ten years old (Bobby Henrey), in the care of the butler (Ralph Richardson) and his wife (Sonia Dresdel). The boy idolizes Richardson, who is a good friend to the boy, more likely to forgive his youthful transgressions, especially when compared to Dresdel, who is quietly sinister in her discipline.

Richardson, it turns out, is in love with a young typist from the embassy, Michele Morgan. Henrey catches them having tea together, but Richardson lets him think that Morgan is his niece, and tells Henrey that he must keep it all a secret. Richardson wants to tell his wife that the marriage is over, but when Dresdel figures things out she traps the two together. This leads to tragedy, and during a police investigation Henrey is determined to lie to save his friend, but he may be hurting him more than he can know.

One of the themes of this film is how easy it is to lie. At one point, early in the film, Henrey lies to Dresdel to keep her from snapping at Richardson. She tells the boy to stop lying, but Richardson intercedes, saying, "There are lies and there are lies," the point being that some lies are out of kindness. The other is the nature of secrets, and when they are entrusted to small child they can take on unanticipated, unpleasant properties.

Reed's direction shares much with The Third Man, including tilted cameras and bold chiaroscuro effects with light and shadow (the film was photographed by Georges Perinal). The centerpiece is a game of hide-and-seek that Richardson and Morgan play with Henrey, none of them realizing that Dresdel is in the house with them. The scene in the tea shop, in which Richardson and Morgan have to discuss their relationship in front of Henrey is also quite effective.

In the long run, I think the most brilliant thing about the film is the performance that Reed milked out of Henrey. The interviews in the supplementary material tells us that Henrey was no actor--"he couldn't act his way out of a paper bag," says the assistant director. Instead, Reed took the child, who had practically no attention span, and managed to get a completely natural performance out of him. He is like a buzzing gnat, always where he shouldn't be, playing a character who can sit still. Watching him during the tense police interrogation at the end of the film (led by Denis O'Dea, who gives a great performance) is a white-knuckler, wondering if the child will unwittingly say something that dooms his friend. At one point he is actually telling the truth and giving evidence that would hang Richardson, but the detectives treat it as the yammering of a child.

Reed and Greene were both Oscar-nominated, and well deserved they were.