From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Film Noir’s Carol Reed’s Fallen Idol

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipediaentry for the Carol Reed film noir Fallen Idol.

DVD Review

Fallen Idol, directed by Carol Reed, starring Ralph Richard son, 1948

“ Oh what tangled webs we weave, when we first practice to deceive,” or words to that effect are what drive this 1948 film noir based on a story by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed (most classically show-cased in the film noir world in the thriller starring Orson Welles as Harry Lyme, The Third Man). Although this is not one of Greene’s first-rate story lines the black and white film techniques used by Reed (although to better effect in The Third Man) highlight his almost claustrophobic and tight film style and demonstrate as well why he was nominated for an Oscar for this work.

As for the story line itself, well, the story is as old as Adam and Eve, maybe older. A guy (Ralph Richardson), a very married guy, working his dull little life away as an English butler (always suspense that job classification automatically of nefarious stuff right off the bat otherwise you will wind out following false leads, okay) in the French embassy in post-war (World War II to keep the wars straight) London has caught the attention of the ambassador’s precocious (and bratty) young son who seems organically incapable of telling the truth when he is cornered. In order to keep him in thrall said butler has, well, made up a false persona about his previous life, a life of African adventure, intrigue, and mayhem. Harmless stuff really, until the hammer comes down.

And that is where our butler’s being married, being very married, to one of the great crones of the ages, something out a witches’ Sabbath (and I am being kind) who works in the embassy as the nanny to that precocious young son comes in. See said crone winds up very mysteriously dead and the fingers begin to point at the butler. Oh, I forgot to tell you, said butler, said unhappy butler had been, ah, playing footsies (hell, having an adulterous affair) with one of the embassy typists, and wifey gotten wise, hysterically wise. Along the way the boy, the butler, anybody with any knowledge about anything, come around the police to confuse the issue. But all things work on in the end, even for chronic liars, at least in this film. As you can now see not strong on the plot line but strong on the direction.