Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42635 in DVD
• Brand: IMAGE ENT.
• Released on: 2006-11-07
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 95 minutes

Features

• 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, whom the child eventually believes might be guilty of murder, is a

Amazon.com
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

Customer Reviews

As impeccable as its title hero
Carol Reed was perhaps even more famous in his day for coaxing superb performances out of children than Steven Spielberg is today... and much of it is due to the astonishing performance in this marvelous film by Bobby Henrey as Phillipe, the son of the French Ambassador to the UK. Henrey delivers what must be one of the greatest child's performances ever on screen (right up there with little Victoire Thivisol in PONETTE). Phile idolizes the butler at the embassy, the sweet but very ordinary Baines (Ralph Richardson), and when his hero becomes accused of murder in the death of his wife young Phile becomes wrapped up in the police investigation. The film does a superb job switching back and forth from a child's to an adult's register--we see things both from Phile's limited child's point of view (and understand his inability to put things together given his naievete), and we also see from an adult perspective how his attempts to help his idol only make things worse and worse. The film is beautifully shot--the embassy itself is something of a marble and tile wonder--and Henrey's frantic need for attention and his jumpy manner (and endearing lisp: "He PUTHED her...") make him seem as real a small child as you can imagine.

Touching, Sensitive Movie of Love, Frustration and Adulation
This is a wonderful movie, superbly written. It has such a subtle way about the frustration of two incompatible spouses, the last-ditch attempt of one to change his life for the better, and his relationship with a young boy in his charge who understands nothing and looks up to him. Ralph Richardson is truly great in this. I love this movie for all its fine touches. I've seen it over and over. The viewer must like movies that really pay attention to how human beings behave, good and bad, and the little fictions they make up to get along in a difficult life.

Agonizing
Some reviewers think Greene's film scripts resemble Hitchcock. They don't. See my review of The Third Man. Greene's major concern in everything he wrote was the question of guilt: in other words, original sin. His concern is with right and wrong, and the machinations of the devil in man. Hitchcock is not concerned with right and wrong. He is interested in Freudian motivation, apart from wanting to give the audience a roller-coaster suspense ride. Greene is not interested in Freud in the slightest. He inserts a clinical scalpel into the convoluted morality of human behaviour, and then twists it. There is extreme tension, of course: how will the plot lines be resolved? In fact, the happy ending of this screenplay is a minor cop-out: but it would be unbearable to have Baines shoot himself. But the viewer is still left wondering what the long-term effect of these experiences will be on the totally confused and disillusioned young boy. Somehow, one feels, the cycle of muddle and deceit will be repeated in the future. This film is much, much more subtle and intellectually sophisticated than anything produced by Hitchcock. Which is why it could hardly have made a fraction of the money pulled in by Hitch.

The reviewer who said this film was shot in a mansion in Chelsea, South London, could not be more wrong. The street locations for the film were in the area of Regent's Park, where the London Zoo is still situated, well north of Oxford Street.