The Fallen Idol - Criterion Collection

The Fallen Idol - Criterion Collection
by Andy Kelleher, Carol Reed

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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Bryan Forbes, John Boorman, Joseph Cotten, Mich?le Morgan, Ralph Richardson
Director: Andy Kelleher, Carol Reed
Brand: Image Entertainment
Producer: Andy Kelleher
Producer: Carol Reed
Producer: Alexander Korda
Writer: Graham Greene
Writer: Lesley Storm
Writer: William Templeton
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-11-07
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion

Movie Reviews of The Fallen Idol - Criterion Collection

Movie Review: British Classic
Summary: 5 Stars

Was there ever a more civilized treatment of infidelity than this British suspenser. Ralph Richardson's butler Baines is the very last word in polished civility and stiff upper lip no matter how extreme the provocation. Yet he's so unfailingly kind and considerate to the boy Phillipe that he's among the most admirable of transgressors. The bond between the lonely son of the French ambassador and the hen-pecked English butler is memorably touching and the emotional heart of the film.

Director Carol Reed has basically a single set to work with. But it's a great one with the sweeping staircase, high domed ceiling, and checkerboard tiles, all keeping the eye entertained at the same time the sinister events unfold. Those events are driven by poor Sonia Dresdel who has the thankless role of the cruel wife and housekeeper Mrs. Baines that she plays to the hilt. You just know from the start that Phillipe's pet garter snake, MacGregor, is doomed in her bleak household. In fact, the screenplay has loaded the deck by making her such an unsympathetic figure. Who can blame Baines for his covert rendeszvous with the lovely Julie (Michelle Morgan) when his shrewish wife remains in the empty embassy waiting to pounce.

What really distinguishes the movie is its skill at viewing adult actions through the eyes of the child. Thus, instead of a conventional two-shot close-up of Baines and Julie in intimate conversation, Reed gives us a three-shot from the perspective of Phillipe as he watches them. We may know what's up with them, but we also share the boy's puzzlement over a world he has yet to grow into. We share that perspective throughout, which is not only an unusual one, but visually reinforces the touching bond between the child of the elite and the highly polished commoner. It also turns the emotional climax (not the dramatic) into a memorably revealing one-- a rite of passage, as it were.

Anyway, in my little book, the movie qualifies as a genuine classic, placing Carol Reed in the same Pantheon as contemporary British masters Hitchcock and Michael Powell. Once you see it, you don't forget it.

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Summary of The Fallen Idol - Criterion Collection

The Fallen Idol was the first of three collaborations between director Carol Reed and writer Graham Greene, who would later team up on the legendary The Third Man, and is a small masterpiece itself. An elegant, thrilling balancing act of suspense and farce, this tale of the fraught relationship between a boy and his beloved butler, who the child eventually believes might be guilty of murder, is a visually and verbally dazzling knockout, with enough tricks up its sleeve to stand with the best of early Hitchcock.

In the impressive filmography of British director Carol Reed, The Fallen Idol is sandwiched between Odd Man Out and The Third Man--the second of three consecutive masterpieces (adapted by Graham Greene from his short story "The Basement Room") by a filmmaker at the peak of his artistic powers. Of those three, The Fallen Idol is the most delicately subdued, but it's a flawlessly plotted thriller that achieves considerable tension through the psychology of its characters. By telling the story through the eyes of a child, the plot gains even greater urgency as a variation on the theme of "the boy who cried wolf," as young Phillipe (Bobby Henrey)--the 8-year-old son of the French ambassador to England--struggles to clear his beloved embassy butler Baines (Ralph Richardson) from being wrongfully accused of murder.

Baines is burdened with a shrewish, overbearing wife (Sonia Dresdel) whose rigid, disciplinarian control of Phillipe sets the stage for suspense; when Mrs.?Baines dies in a terrible fall on the embassy staircase, her husband (who has been having a secret affair with an embassy typist) is the prime suspect. Phillipe, caught between his love for Baines and his suspicion of the butler's guilt, tries to convince investigators of Baines's innocence. But the boy's pleas are ignored, and The Fallen Idol expertly plays on the child's good but woefully misguided intentions. In Reed's visual strategy, a simple paper airplane can become the focus of almost unbearable suspense, and as incriminating evidence builds a strong case against Baines, Reed maintains that suspense to the final moments of the film. Low-key and yet still highly effective, the film received Oscar nominations for Reed's direction and Greene's adapted screenplay. --Jeff Shannon

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