The Man in Grey (1943)

Film: The Man in Grey (1943)

Stars: Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, James Mason, Stewart Granger

Director: Leslie Arliss

Oscar History: No Nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Margaret Lockwood-click here to learn more about Ms. Lockwood (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

The Lady Vanishes was a hit, and certainly made Alfred Hitchcock's career, but Margaret Lockwood wasn't as lucky.  She traveled to the United States to make films, but they weren't particularly successful, and American directors didn't know what to do with her talents in the way that Hitchcock did.  She starred in lower-billed roles against Shirley Temple & Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., but she didn't connect with American audiences & so she went back to British cinema to continued fizzling failure, and it's possible her career might have ended there, with one big hit under-her-belt & the rest just not connecting.  That is, of course, unless The Man in Grey hadn't come along.  Made in 1943, the movie was a surprise smash, and even critics enjoyed it (though nowhere near as much as audiences).  The first of what are now known as the "Gainsborough melodramas," The Man in Grey graduated Lockwood to the biggest names in British cinema, and while she never really succeeded in American pictures, she would stay a major draw at the British box office for the remainder of the decade.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in flashback, and is about the friendship between two women: Hesther (Lockwood), a proud woman who was once wealthy but has now lost her family fortune, and Clarissa (Calvert), a sweet heiress who wants to befriend Hesther.  The two have a falling out when Hesther runs off in an ill-advised marriage, and during their absence Clarissa marries Lord Rohan (Mason), who doesn't love her but wants to find an acceptable mate to carry on his line.  Clarissa is in love with Rokeby (Granger), but Rohan won't let her leave, despite the fact that after Hesther returns, it turns out he's in love with her.  While no one is happy in this scenario, it is Hesther who finally has enough, and when Clarissa comes down with a fever, she puts the fire out & opens the windows, essentially forcing her to succumb to pneumonia.  Before Hesther can marry Rohan, though, he realizes what she's done, and while he won't turn her in to the police, he decides he should inflict his own punishment-and beats her to death.

I have a confession to make-normally I watch these films chronologically, but I happened to watch next week's film first, so I actually know next week's movie is similar to this week's but better.  Part of that is that this film doesn't put Margaret Lockwood, whom I've discovered is an acting treasure, front-and-center.  Her Hesther is a side character, underwritten & underrepresented on the screen for Clarissa & her random inanities getting center stage.  This makes the film's latter half, which is still enjoyable, less riveting.

But I can't deny that Lockwood, even with a smaller part, doesn't own the screen.  As a woman bitter about her position in life (she wanted money, she felt she deserved it, and if love happened to come with it, that was incidental), she plays her role perfectly, reducing everyone around her to mere hurdles as she struggles to get her own way.  I loved the penultimate scene of the movie, even if it's far crueler than even Hesther deserved (where she's essentially beaten to death by her lover for killing his wife), as it's so out-of-character for a film of this era (there's no way that this movie could have been made in the United States at the time).  As I said, next week you'll discover that this leniency from the British film board could create one of the most scandalous pictures I've seen from the 1940's, one that puts Lockwood & her newfound penchant for villainy center stage.