By the time a Scotland Yard detective raises his hand to his brow and says, “Will someone take this child away,” you feel his migraine. Because Phile, the lad in “The Fallen Idol,” can be as exhausting as he is innocent.
Carol Reed directed his black-and-white beauty in 1948. A restored print of the psychological thriller about a boy and the butler he adores and brings to ruin begins a one-week run at Starz FilmCenter.
Adapted from his short story “The Basement Room,” this was novelist Graham Greene’s first collaboration with director Reed. His second, “The Third Man,” sits atop many critics’ lists as one of the great films of the 20th Century. “The Fallen Idol” remains one of those classics that makes you thankful you haven’t seen them all. Bobby Henrey plays the tow-headed son of the French ambassador to England. He has no friends but Baines and a garden snake he keeps hidden.
Ralph Richardson gives Baines buttoned-down depth. He’s sweetly attentive to Phile’s demanding lonesomeness. But Richardson reveals layers of ardor and frustration when Baines interacts with the women in his life.
As the movie opens, the ambassador is leaving to bring his wife home. We get the sense that his 8-year-old son is left alone often.
We learn quickly too that while Baines may be the embassy’s manservant, his wife (Sonia Dresdel) rules the roost.
When Phile follows the butler to a nearby pastry shop, he discovers his friend comforting a woman. Julie (Michèle Morgan) works at the embassy but plans to flee their untenable romance.
Not entirely thwarted by Phile’s arrival, the two attempt to carry on their lovers’ chat in the third person. A question the movie poses brilliantly time and again is: What do children understand of adult situations?
The answer: They grasp the mood, but not nearly as often the facts. “Funny isn’t it that Julie worked in the embassy, and all the time she was your niece,” Phile says as he and Baines return home.
Baines enlists Phile in keeping a secret. Like any child, the boy has an impossible time with that obligation, especially once Mrs. Baines begins to work on him. “We have a secret now, you and I,” she says too conspiratorily. Narnia’s White Witch has nothing on her.
Reed and cinematographer Georges Périnal provide a masterful metaphor for and a stunning example of film editing, when Baines and his wife argue on the staircase landing.
He grabs her, she pulls back. Phile runs down the fire escape as this tango of wills takes place. Each time he reaches a new landing, he sees a different moment in the couple’s quarrel. When he arrives at the final window, Mrs. Baines is lying at the bottom of the staircase.
Did Baines murder his wife? Phile believes he did, and the more he protects him, the more he condemns him.
“The Fallen Idol” is a marital thriller more than murder mystery. From its title to Mrs. Baines hatred of Phile’s snake, the movie is full of righteous symbols. This is after all, Graham Greene territory.
“Fallen Idol”
NOT RATED 1 hour, 35 minutes|PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER|Directed by Carol Reed; written by Graham Greene, based on his short story “The Basement Room”; photography by Georges Périnal; starring Ralph Richardson, Michèle Morgan, Sonia Dresdel, Bobby Henrey, Jack Hawkins, Bernard Lee |Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
