Film #32 of Project 40

”Some lies are just kindness.”

What would an Alfred Hitchcock film featuring a kid as its protagonist look like? Probably like this. Carol Reed takes a complex story of lies, betrayals and secrets and narrates its through the eyes of an innocent child who believes everything that he is told and everything that he sees. The Fallen Idol has a brilliant concept and Carol Reed unleashes the potential of Graham Greene’s story with the help of his talented actors and gives us something that is thought-provoking and entertaining at the same time. This is basically the story of a child who witnesses the moral deformities of adults’ world and decides to play the same game.…

93/100

Childhood innocence is a mysterious time in everyone's life that can't be fully explained. There's a simultaneous sense of trust and suspicion that goes along with everyone, and our actions determine which of the two factors ultimately comes out on top. Phillipe, the protagonist of Carol Reed's twisted mystery The Fallen Idol, only wants to help out. He believes his best friend and adventuring butler Baines has committed the unthinkable: murder. Naturally, he has an emotional attachment to Baines, and will do anything to prevent him from being taken from him. In a true "boy who cried wolf" fashion, he attempts to lure the police's beliefs away from murder suspicion to a simple accident of his own doing. But…

Part of my 5 Directors x 5 Unseen Films (13) challenge.

Oh yes, this was fun! It was director Carol Reed's first collaboration with scriptwriter Graham Greene, who also penned the short story upon which it was based, "The Basement Room" (1936). The duo would team up a year later to create "The Third Man" (1949) and then again a decade later for "Our Man in Havana."

This story is set in London at a foreign embassy, where seven-year-old Phillipe (Bobby Henrey) lives with his father the Ambassador (Gerard Heinz). We soon learn that the boy's mother has been away for quite some time, but is expected to return soon. In the meantime, embassy staff look after his well being,…

The Fallen Idol is the first of three films considered masterpieces to result from the legendary meeting of director Carol Reed and writer Graham Greene. The two also colloborated on The Third Man and Our Man in Havana. This is the first of the three films that I've seen, and I must say I'm quite impressed. It's an elegant balance of suspense and farce that I thoroughly enjoyed.

This is the tale of a fraught relationship between a boy named Phillipe (Bobby Henrey) and the beloved butler Mr. Baines (Ralph Richardson), whom he suspects may have commited murder.

I think the most noticeable quality of The Fallen Idol is the writing. The dialogue is excellent throughout, and it's delivered well…

[59]

A bunch of little things taint the overall effect of this “could-have-been” masterpiece, things that I must assume to be largely personal objections seeing as how they hardly seem to bother anyone else, nevertheless planting this firmly into like-but-don’t-love territory. Outward craftsmanship is top notch, wouldn’t expect anything less from Reed, but the abutment of thriller/murder-mystery against childhood-innocence/ignorance is dreadfully aslant towards the latter -- somewhat understandable, to a degree, seeing as how “Through the Eyes of a Spoilt, Imaginative, Young Boy” is clearly the paramount thesis here, but Reed places so much formal affirmation on the former that we’re inclined to—at least partially—evaluate this under the hood of its aggregated “suspense,” too, which frankly comes off feeling like…

This stylish psycho-horror competes with The Innocents in the category "Best movie in a big house featuring small children, long stairs and shadows.”

The cinematography (by Georges Périnal, already Academy awarded for The Thief of Bagdad) is so exquisitely done, the numerous offerings of interpretations almost becomes a parody. There are endless runnings in and out of rooms, opening and closing of doors and going up and down stairs. All this while the story itself opens and closes various escape routes for those involved. Freud should be proud. For instance, Périnal frames Mrs. Baines and little Phile from behind in one shot that summaries the whole film. The kid is on his way out through a door (sneaking at her)…

More subdued on the lighting here than in Odd Man Out and The Third Man, but no matter. Carol Reed decides to focus on the internal, a tussle of childhood displayed in contradictory melodrama. Represented externally through dutch angles opening up the gorgeous interior design, Reed's direction once again shows his power to transform oblong imagery into moral conflict.

As seen from my colleagues, Reed's fascination with tonal shifts midway through the narrative seems divisive. However, the shift in tone often opens up the dilemma to more thematic depth. In the same way that Odd Man Out switches to a more humanistic aura, The Fallen Idol switches to show the naivete of the protagonist when faced with dire circumstances. Whether…