[Last Film I Watched] The Fallen Idol (1948) 7.7/10

This is an immemorial conundrum for a middle-aged married man in our monogamous society: whereas his wife becomes more and more embittered and insufferable, out of a stroke of luck (or desperation), he finds a possible new lease on life with a younger, beautiful woman, the strategy of bailing out from a dead-end marriage often goes awry when running afoul of a misery-needs-company retaliation from the deserted and begrudged. This is what happens in Carol Reed's THE FALLEN IDOL, adapted by Graham Greene from his short story THE BASEMENT STORY.

In London, Mr. Baines (Richardson) is the butler of the ambassador of an unspecified francophone country, whose wife (Dresdel, snarky, fierce and uncompromisingly obnoxious) also works in the embassy, but he is chastely enamored with a younger colleague Julie (Morgan), when the latter gently hands him her ultimatum, Mr. Baines decides to reclaim his freedom, only Ms. Baine is anything but a soft touch, she will fight her corner until her last breath, but is her falling to her death is an accidental windfall for Mr. Baines or his crime of passion?

In the eyes of an audience, the whole act is plain as day, but through the lens of our main subject, a young boy Philippe (Henrey), the son of the ambassador who is left alone in the palatial residence, Greene’s mordant tale points up a child’s innocence getting embroidered with the falsehood of the adult life, and who is the titular“the fallen idol”? It is Mr. Baines, an avuncular father figure to Philippe and entertains him with his tall-tale adventures in Africa, which doesn’t necessarily mean it is true. After incidentally discovering Mr. Baines’ assignation with Julie, whom he refers to Philippe as his niece (the jumping-off place of a concatenation of lies which would perniciously compound Philippe’s inchoate worldview), Philippe is subjected to an untapped territory of keeping secrets, firstly from the idolized Mr. Baines, then from a harpy Ms. Baines, until he has been caught between defending a murderer (at least from his perspective, no one would blame him for his conviction) and grappling with the horrific happenstance, although, the film dramatically blurs the moral line by depicting Ms. Baines as an utterly unpleasant creature (she is the one dispatches Philippe’s pet snake, an apt symbol of the reptilian treachery among adults), so much so that no one is supposed to feel sorry for her upshot, a broad stroke emanates a ghost of misogyny albeit conveniently enhancing the credibility of Philippe’s dithered reaction.

Yet by and large, the film is a cracking allegory taps into a grey area and ushered by a convincingly elicited child performance as our undivided focal point from a young Henrey, who is not exactly an acting prodigy and the end result should be equally attributed to Mr. Reed’s patient guidance as well as to this boy's expressive reaction shots.Ralph Richardson, establishing an impermeable veneer of decorousness and presence of mind nonetheless, carefully carries an undertow of cravenly helplessness writs large in the latter part before a rushed revelation saving the day. As for Michèle Morgan, as svelte as an indubitable attention-grabber, her part is thinly written and largely sidelined.

Against the grain of an arrestingBildungsroman, THE FALLEN IDOL potently accentuates Reed’s directional prowess and his impeccable knack of frame composition and handsome chiaroscuro, the shots of a nocturnal street-scape tellingly anticipates his defining pièce-de-résistance THE THIRD MAN (1949). For all its aesthetic inclination and profound perspicacity, when Philippe exasperatedly hollers that it is him who upset the vase, one feels unable to refrain from thinking that here is a step too far of Reed’s indoctrination, a conspiratorial contemplation in silence might have worked better under this circumstance.

referential point: Carol Reed’s THE THIRD MAN (1949, 8.3/10).