The Fallen Idol (1948)
Carol Reed

Tara McCormack
posted 16 August 2006

This year is the centenary of the British film director Carol Reed, and the National Film Theatre (NFT) is showing a season of his films, which opened with The Fallen Idol. Reed's best known work is of course, The Third Man (on at the NFT now). There is no mystery about why as brilliant a film as the The Third Man regularly makes it onto the best-films lists, but it is a surprise that The Fallen Idol is not better known.

The witty, clever and touching script was written by Graham Greene, one of three (including The Third Man) that he wrote for Reed. The actors do Greene's script justice - from the sympathetic lead characters, played by Ralph Richardson and Michele Morgan, and Bobby Henrey, who plays little Phillipe, to the smallest supporting roles, such as the char-ladies, Rose the local prostitute, and bumbling Scotland Yard detectives.

Set over a weekend in late 1940s London, the story is an exploration of a child's embroilment in an adult drama which he cannot understand, and his naïve attempts to protect someone that he loves. Phillipe is the young son of the French ambassador, left for the weekend in the care of his beloved Baines, the butler, and the unpleasant Mrs Baines, the housekeeper. Phillipe looks forward to a weekend of having free reign in the embassy, and of trying to keep out of Mrs Baines' way, but becomes unwittingly entangled in the private lives of the adults when he follows Baines in the afternoon and interrupts a clandestine meeting.

Baines is trapped in a failed and miserable marriage, desperately in love with the charming Julie, a typist at the embassy, who returns his love. He cannot stay with Mrs Baines, yet cannot leave her. Julie feels that the situation is no longer bearable for either of them, but Baines begs her not to go, resolving to ask his wife for a divorce that night. This painful discussion takes place under the watchful, though bored, eyes of Phillipe, in the form of a discussion about 'their friends', as both the adults try to hold back their tears. Poor Julie, says Phillipe, as she leaves distraught, she is so upset about her friend. Baines tells Phillipe that he must keep this meeting a secret, which Phillipe gladly agrees to, enjoying his secret with Baines. Trouble begins later that day after Baines has begun to try to broach the subject of divorce with his wife. When Phillipe inadvertently lets something slip to Mrs Baines, she instantly guesses that there is another woman in Baines' life, and makes Phillipe promise to keep their conversation a secret.

There is a clever and subtle interplay between the adult's world and the child's world. Complications emerge from the secrets and promises that they have made the child keep, and from his own childish inability to understand the implications of his promises. To add to the complications, tall tales that Baines has told Phillipe to amuse him are taken to be real by Phillipe, convincing him of certain things. Yet the adults have also relied on the child's promises and that very inability to understand the situation, forgetting that this also means that Phillipe cannot be a reliable ally. The portrayal of childhood, and the enormous gap between children and adults is almost alien to contemporary eyes, and one has to cast one's imagination back to a time when children were neither especially revered nor the subjects of much anxiety. Little Phillipe is neither saint nor sinner, he is amoral, but amoral simply because he is a child, and incapable of weighing up what he should do or of thinking more broadly.

Thus his actions are dictated by his own childish and limited ideas of what is right. Phillipe takes his secret-keeping very seriously, yet as an innocent child he has no conception of the consequences of his actions, nor any comprehension of the drama played out by the adults. His promise to Mrs Baines playing on his mind, he anxiously asks Baines and Julie if he should always keep secrets, even, say, of people he doesn't like, such as Mrs Baines. Unaware that Mrs Baines has found out what is going on, they laughingly tell him that he must keep all secrets. The desperate love between Baines, and Julie is of course a matter of supreme indifference and incomprehension to the eight year old boy - oh look, he says the next day, bored and rather cross that his day out to the zoo with Baines is interrupted, there is your niece. As the drama unfolds, Phillipe doggedly sticks to the idea that he must protect Baines, even later when he thinks that Baines has murdered Mrs Baines, his devotion is unshaken. The Fallen Idol is a film of great originality, charm, intelligence, humour and drama. A great tribute to both Carol Reed, and Graham Greene.

The Carol Reed season continues at the NFT, London, till 30 September 2006.