OVP: The Fallen Idol (1948)

Film: The Fallen Idol (1948)

Stars: Ralph Richardson, Michele Morgan, Sonia Dresdel, Bobby Henrey, Denis O'Dea

Director: Carol Reed

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Director, Adapted Screenplay...despite a 1948 release date internationally, these nominations are for the 1949 Oscars, hence the tag at the bottom)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

One of the few directors to receive multiple Oscar nominations for film noir was Carol Reed.  Reed, a failed British actor who became a successful director-for-hire during World War II blossomed in the years after the war with a trio of film classics.  Two of them I've seen before, and are favorites of mine: the James Mason man-on-the-run flick Odd Man Out, and the Joseph Cotten-led The Third Man, which is the greatest film noir of all time (imho).  I had never seen, though, the middle film of the trio.  Reed was cited for an Academy Award for directing The Fallen Idol, which was honestly all I knew headed into this movie.  What I found out was that the film stretches the barometers of film noir (though it's oftentimes labeled as such), but is a thrilling, quite captivating tale of adultery, misunderstanding, and shocking death.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is told largely from the perspective of a young boy named Philippe (Henrey), whose parents are out-of-town (as they are wont to be most of the time, given his father is an ambassador).  He is largely raised by the Baines' family, which includes kindly Mr. Baines (Richardson), the family's majordomo, and Mrs. Baines (Dresdel), his cruel wife who is the domineering housekeeper of the family.  Baines is having an affair with Julie (Morgan) someone he met at the embassy his employer works at, but his wife won't grant him a divorce, and is intent of proving he is having an affair.  Philippe is aware of Julie, but not of the affair, and accidentally lets slip that Julie is not a figment of Mrs. Baines delusions.  Mrs. Baines pretends to leave to visit her sick aunt, so Baines, Julie, & Philippe get to spend the day together in the open, but when Mrs. Baines returns, trying to catch him in the act, she accidentally falls from a ledge-less balcony to her death.  This sets off a series of misunderstandings over whether or not Baines killed his wife (he did not), largely driven by Philippe's misunderstandings of what was and wasn't true.

As a rule, I generally find Classical Hollywood films about children to be dull.  Movies that are meant for children in this era make the kids too saintly, and movies that aren't (like The Fallen Idol) usually make the kids annoying.  This movie doesn't entirely get there-Henrey's performance is sometimes too cloying, and it makes large stretches of the film a bit silly.  It also means the ending of the film doesn't land.  The movie ends with Philippe actually telling the truth, not realizing that by doing so he might convict his idol Baines of a crime he didn't commit, but the policeman assumes he's lying.  That would be a cute ending, but it doesn't work properly because it's not where it ends-it ends with him looking at his parents, whom he clearly doesn't love or really know, with antipathy, understanding that he's about to go back to being lonely again (and may well have lost his friendship with Baines).  This isn't what the movie in front of it was about, though, and it honestly invites you to ponder what would've happened if this had been able to operate outside the Hays Code.

That said, the direction here is solid.  We get to see a lot of tension, particularly the murder of Mrs. Baines, with clever camerawork (her death, which the audience is going to relish on some level given how vicious she's been, is played for both horror and comedy in one full swoop as she dies doing something she scolded Philippe over just hours earlier).  The performance from Dredsel is also strong.  This movie isn't really a film noir (though it has elements of it, given we get a detective, a beautiful woman, and the less-commented-on-but-frequent-trope of an evil older woman who gets her comeuppance), but Dresdel is so nasty in the part, making sure to add a level of paranoia to her character that is very welcome, that I get why this is oftentimes mislabeled as noir rather than just a more standard thriller.

1940's: The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler