The Detective (1954)

The Detective (aka Father Brown)(Robert Hamer, 1954) It's quite the scandal when Father Brown (Alec Guinness) is arrested by the local constabulary when he is caught in the act of "burglarious purposes" in front of an open safe. At police headquarters, the humble English vicker tries to explain that he was only trying to return the "swag" ("I believe that's what it's called—'swag'") for one of his parishioners (he admonishes him for being "an incompetent thief...clearly incapable of earning a dishonest living") whom he had convinced to forego a life of petty thievery and, in return, Brown would return the stolen good to the rightful place. That's when the police arrived.

 

A night in the hoosegow (which he finds "most interesting" and thanks the police for their "hospitality") and he's identified by the church authorities and sprung. So, of course, when he's hauled before the Bishop, he assumes it's for the arrest—he having a reputation in the diocese as "an odd one". But, it's of another matter entirely: it's seems that the Eucharistic Congress is soon to be held in Rome. And the Bishop has decided to send the Holy Cross of St. Augustine, which is twelve centuries old and currently resides in Father Brown's parish church. Father Brown considers the cross "not valuable...priceless," so he's alarmed when informed by a local Inspector than an "imminent criminal is intent to intercept the cross en route." The criminal's name is Gustav Flambeau* (Peter Finch) and Father Brown is only too aware of the master-thief's reputation—"a human chameleon" such an expert of disguise that no one knows what he looks like.

When Brown is informed of the precautions, the father-detective goes into a sort of distracted trance—in his mind, he's figured out three different way that the cross could be stolen. "So, if I, an amateur, can steal the cross in three ways , one can only think what Flambeau will do!" Brown volunteers to take the cross himself—"one priest indistinguishable from hundreds carrying one cross undetectable from hundreds" But, the inspector and the Bishop are in agreement: they will have undercover men make their way to Rome in the hopes of intercepting the wiley thief. To Brown, this is "lunacy!" He makes his own arrangements to carry out his conception of a plan.

Now, as a recovering Catholic, I must confess that the closest I get to religion these days is through Father Brown, the sleuthing priest created by author G.K.Chesterton in 1910 (predating Agatha Christie's sleuths by a decade). I've watched the Mark Williams series, having seen nearly every episode, and read a few of the stories and have always found a kind of solace in the character's rock-solid faith and his unorthodox application of it when dealing with the near-occasion of sinners. He does not judge, believing not that people are good or evil, but merely people, and those that have strayed can always be moved on to the better path. He is not naive, or a cross-eyed optimist, but will argue that his faith is even more pertinent in a world where virtue is challenged. At one point in The Detective, he says: "My son, you think that you are a man of the world and that I am not. But I assure you, my 'innocent' ears encounter every day stories of a horror that would make your sophisticated hair stand on end. Although I wear funny clothes, and have taken certain vows, I live far more in the world than you do." It's a world where his ability to pick locks, or judo-wrestle are useful tools, particularly when employed for good. He'll even pick a pocket (but only to prove a point when he returns the "swag").

When I found that there was a "Father Brown" movie, particularly to my delight that Alec Guinness played the part, I began an exhaustive search to find it. It took years, but it can now be found** And it exceeded my expectations. I've never been disappointed by a Guinness performance*** and his Brown is very much a sheep in wolfs clothing. He's as sharp as they come, if a bit idiosyncratic, and when called upon Guinness overplays the "twee" nature of Brown, his awkwardness hiding a quick-wittedness—although his humility will never allow him to admit it.

The Detective also has two of my favorite British performers: the ever-beguiling Joan Greenwood, (who'd starred with Guinness in a couple of his comedies) as one of Father Brown's more well-off parishioners and confidantes; and Bernard Lee (who would go on to play MI6 head "M" in the first 16 films of the Bond series) as an undercover police officer doggedly pursuing Flambeau, and who finds Brown's deft interference almost in itself criminal.

But, the surprise is Peter Finch as master-thief Flambeau. Up to this point, Finch could be rather stiff in his roles, but, here, he's light-hearted and charming, pulling off the character-work in disguise, and, when unmasked, giving off the air of a bon-vivant, quite happy in his mis-deeds. Guinness and he have a lot of dialog together and they spar winningly.

Based rather loosely on Chesterton's first Father Brown story "The Blue Cross," It's absolutely delightful and was well worth the wait.

* Interesting that they call him "Gustav" Flambeau as Chesterton gave him the christian name of "Hercule"—perhaps to not confuse him with Christie's Poirot, who debuted 10 years later—and the character is supposed to be French, and Gustav is considered a Swedish or German name.

 

** On the streaming service Tubi, but the Lord only knows how long it will remain there. 

*** Okay, there is one. It is Hitler: The Last Ten Days where I found his performance as The Führer rather dull. Time Magazine's critic said it was only useful in showing "the banality of evil." Curiously, IMDB says it's the only performance Guinness was completely happy with, having campaigned actively to play it.

The Old Dark House (1932)

The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932) It is a dark and stormy—one might say "dreadful"—night. Trying to negotiate the way to Shrewesbury amidst a blinding rain on a road prone to crippling muddiness and threatening landslides are Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey), his wife Margaret (Gloria Stuart...from Titanic?) and friend Roger Penerel (Melvyn Douglas), slap-dasherly young people without a care in the world, except for what little irritations cross their bourgeois path—like how full is the whiskey flask? On such a night, maps and directional instincts can become stymied. Finding a large, sturdy house (more importantly, the lights are on), they pull up and knock on the large and imposing door. They are allowed entrance by the master of the house, Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), self-described as "rather a nervous man" who allows his hulking man-servant, Morgan (Boris Karloff) to give them access from the deluge outside, although he is less welcoming than one might wish.

If he is reluctant, his sister Rebecca (Eva Moore) is even less so. A bit of a religious-hysteric, she is more than a little bitter at her treatment within the family, feeling persecuted, and if her perception of her family is skewed, her reaction to outsiders, and, worse, these particularly un-devout young people is openly hostile. She has one bottom-line: "No BEDS!" She's probably fearing orgies under her roof.                                                          

The guests will have to be comfortable in the drawing room, although Margaret is soaked to the skin and insists on changing clothes, which she is allowed to do in one of the Femm bedrooms under Rebecca's watchful, judgmental eye, who tells a brief history of her treatment within the "sinful and godless" Femm family*, and revealing that the father of the Fenn's, 102 year-old Roderick Femm, is still alive and living in the house. Despite this one consideration, the Femm's are determined to keep the Waverton's and Penerel in the drawing room and discourage them from trying to access any other part of the house for their safety. They are particularly warned about Morgan, whom Horace describes as an "uncivilized brute" and "rather dangerous"—he has a tendency to drink a little and molest a lot. Femm fortunes evidently preclude them from hiring a replacement.

Just as the first guests are getting comfortable being uncomfortable at the Femm's, they are joined by two others: Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton), a genial and bellicose bloke, with his evening companion "Ducane"—a chorine whose real name is Sophie Perkins (Lillian Bond), who are far more free-spirited and liven things up a bit, but create a bit more frisson, adding a little more chaos in the mix bottled up in the barely-contained Femm house. Libations are provided and a dinner served, But on such a night, things can not go smoothly. The electricity goes out in the storm, and when Philip goes to retrieve an oil lamp from upstairs—Horace, it seems, is too scared to go—and he notices a couple of locked rooms, one of which has a voice coming from inside it.

Penerel and the chorus-girl start to get chummy, and the brute Morgan (it seems) has gotten into the liquor and he attacks poor Margaret the first chance she is alone. At this point, lines are drawn in the wood floors and the night becomes one of survival and the discovery of secrets that have been hidden away for years. And although it has all the trappings and tropes of a horror film, under Whale's direction there is a giddy, giggling sense of humor bubbling just under the surface that is campy and knows just how far to push the material as far as commentary and suggestiveness.

Whale is clearly having fun with the project (based on J.B. Priestly's 1927 novel "Benighted"), the second project he made after his success with Frankenstein, and although he turns down the German Expressionism he wrought in that film, the film is richly textured, not only between levels of light and dark in subject and dialogue, but also pictorially, thanks to his Frankenstein cinematographer Arthur Edeson, who would move from Universal to the Warner Brothers and make his mark on such films as The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. It appears to be a stepping-stone to the extreme arch-tone he took in his subsequent The Bride of Frankenstein.

The Old Dark House also marked the Hollywood debut of actor Charles Laughton, who would quite quickly rise in the ranks from talented character actor to star and eventually director. 

The Old Dark House is one of those wonders of the pre-Code era, where the subject matter could be broadened (as well as the moral implications of characters' actions), leaving audiences with endings with moral ambiguities, and troubling implications, rather than satiate them with happy endings. You could almost look at The Old Dark House as a hybrid of the horror, Romantic Gothic, and even noir genres to create an unsettling thrill-ride that leave one disturbed even after one has exited the theater.

The trouble with those pre-Code films, however, was that once the Hays Code came into play, many films, to ensure further booking into theaters, were censored, or even re-shot to meet the new stringent standards placed on movie entertainment. The ones which could not be "rehabilitated" were confined behind locked doors in the vaults of the studio and, in many cases, forgotten and abandoned.

The Old Dark House was considered a lost film until it was dug up from the Universal racks in 1968 and restored, saved from the depredations that time and its storage on flammable nitrate film would inflict on it. Rather than left to rot, it was exhumed, and another classic Horror film, one of its most curious and perverse entries, was saved from the grave.

*

"They were all godless here. They used to bring their women here - brazen, lolling creatures in silks and satins. They filled the house with laughter and sin, laughter and sin. And if I ever went down among them, my own father and brothers - they would tell me to go away and pray, and I prayed - and left them with their lustful red and white women!"
Director Whale goes to town during this sequence—probably because it's so talky—with distorted mirror and lens effects to disorient the viewer, and to add his own visual commentary on sister Rebecca's rant.

The Man in the White Suit

The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951) My favorite of the Ealing Studios British comedies of Alec Guinness is this genre-crossing sci-fi/fantasy/corporate satire about the financial efficacy of building a better movie-trap. The canard is that the world will beat a path to your door, but the reality is that the mouse-trap industry (no doubt led by the appropriately-named "Victor®"—a division of Woodstream Corp.) will probably suppress it, buy the patent, or, in some other way, bury the innovation to protect their own short-term (dare I say "fiscal") interests, even if it might (indeed) revolutionize the industry. Sure, it might be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but that's only because the knife industry allowed it (talk about "the cutting edge!).

The Man in the White Suit tells the story of researcher Sidney Stratton (Guinness), who, through chemistry and some minor combustion (which gets him fired from his original job at Corland Mills, run by Michael Corland (Michael Gough), he is snapped up by the rival Birnley Mills, where his attempts finally succeed in concocting an innovative thread, a polymer that repels everything, making an indestructible, water-proof, stain-resistant weave—it even resists dyes, thus making it a permanent glow-in-the-dark white color.

It's seen as something of a revolutionary break-through, a boon to the consumer. And Stratton sees it as a revolution of sorts: who wouldn't want an indestructible suit or dress that would never wear out and never need to be replaced?

Clothiers, for one big example. The garment industry. With clothing that can never rip, fray, stain, or shrink, who would want to buy other clothing ever again? So, after the initial flush of excitement over the innovation, the corporation Stratton works for, Birnley Mills, looks down the fiscal road and sees consumers with no need to further buy replacement clothing. And so the corporate board acts to repress Stratton's invention, trying to buy out the rights in order to do it, but Stratton, with an inventor's righteous zeal, refuses.

And lest anyone think this is a liberal screed about corporate greed, it casts equal shade at the trade unions who also want to stop progress, as the fabric is seen as a threat to industry that will cost workers' jobs, should it ever see the business end of a coat hanger. Despite being offered a million dollar deal to sell out, Stratton resists, and is held captive as long as he holds out, but he has the sympathy from the daughter (Joan Greenwood) of the mills' head (Cecil Parker), if only because the board tries to recruit her to turn Stratton's mind around.

Stratton ensures that he will always be the brightest guy in the room.

It's a great story and a great movie, and over the years I've seen it reflected—rarely—in other films. For example, Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor can be seen as an American version of the same story, with the military over-zealously pursuing Professor Brainard's version of "Flubber." A true-story equivalent is Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream, about inventor Preston Tucker and his intent on creating a safe, stylish and efficient "car of the future"—and the auto industry's successful attempt to hinder the production of any of the innovative cars to just 50.

There's another aspect to The Man in the White Suit that endears it to me, but it's purely personal—it's the charmingly goofy lab sounds that emanate from Stratton's efforts that create a sort of obsessive fandango as he pursues his efforts. I came across the track (created by sound editor Mary Habberfield) in a BBC sound effects library, and, when I worked on a certain kids' science show, I had the intention of using the track on a proposed second season episode about "Psuedo-science." Budget considerations pushed the subject to the third season and, by that time, I had moved on to other things. Still would have loved to have had that little private joke realized, though.