Did you people see the same film I saw?

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Was there ever a more civilized treatment of infidelity than this British suspenser. Ralph Richardson's butler Baines is the very last word in polished civility and stiff upper lip no matter how extreme the provocation. Yet he's so unfailingly kind and considerate to the boy Phillipe that he's among the most admirable of transgressors. The bond between the lonely son of the French ambassador and the hen-pecked English butler is memorably touching and the emotional heart of the film.Director Carol Reed has basically a single set to work with. But it's a great one with the sweeping staircase, high domed ceiling, and checkerboard tiles, all keeping the eye entertained at the same time the sinister events unfold. Those events are driven by poor Sonia Dresdel who has the thankless role of the cruel wife and housekeeper Mrs. Baines that she plays to the hilt. You just know from the start that Phillipe's pet garter snake, MacGregor, is doomed in her bleak household. In fact, the screenplay has loaded the deck by making her such an unsympathetic figure. Who can blame Baines for his covert rendezvous with the lovely Julie (Michelle Morgan) when his shrewish wife remains in the empty embassy waiting to pounce.What really distinguishes the movie is its skill at viewing adult actions through the eyes of the child. Thus, instead of a conventional two-shot close-up of Baines and Julie in intimate conversation, Reed gives us a three-shot from the perspective of Phillipe as he watches them. We may know what's up with them, but we also share the boy's puzzlement over a world he has yet to grow into. We share that perspective throughout, which is not only an unusual one, but visually reinforces the touching bond between the child of the elite and the highly polished commoner. It also turns the emotional climax (not the dramatic) into a memorably revealing one-- a rite of passage, as it were.Anyway, in my little book, the movie qualifies as a genuine classic, placing Carol Reed in the same Pantheon as contemporary British masters Hitchcock and Michael Powell. Once you see it, you don't forget it.

I don't wish to duplicate other members synopses of the storyline of this wonderful, classic film, but I would like to say something about the performance of the then eight years old Bobby Henrey as Phillipe and how crucial he was to Carol Reed's realisation of The Fallen Idol. Bobby's parents were writers and he had initially been chosen to star in the film both for his looks when Reed had seen a photograph of him peering out of the window of his London apartment on the dust jacket of one of his parents books and because he was bi-lingual, having spent his early childhood in both France and England and spoke English with a French accent, which was called for in the script. Bobby had never acted before, but Reed, a man of infinite patience where children and child actors were concerned, persevered with him over an incredible shooting schedule of five months (a long time for those days) shooting numerous takes of every scene involving the boy and his dialogue, which paid off handsomely, as he managed to coax out of him the most incredible and natural performance by a child actor ever seen on the screen and certainly not bettered since.No better example of all this can be found than in the scene where Philippe is convinced that Baines, his only friend whom he idolises, is going to be sent to the gallows for a murder he did not commit. At this point, he realises just how much he adores and loves Baines and that he cannot live without him. With all the passion in his heart and soul, Phillipe pleads with the police to listen to him as he finally decides to tell the truth about what happened in the hope that this will save his friend: "Oh, please, you must listen to me! I have something to tell you! Oh, please listen to me! Oh, please! Please listen to me! You have to listen to me! You must listen to me! It will only take a moment and it will put everything right." But the police completely ignore him. This scene is so gut-wrenchingly heart-breaking, that it's almost too upsetting to watch and you become totally involved in it and feel very deeply for this increasingly desperate little boy. It is an incredible performance that is so perfect, it has to be seen to be believed. I cannot recommend this film highly enough. It is one of the finest films ever made in the history of the cinema.

Mr Baines (Ralph Richardson) and his wife (Sonia Dresdel) are left to look after a boy, Phillipe (Bobby Henrey) in a French Embassy house while the parents are away. Phillipe looks up to Mr Baines while disliking Mrs Baines, the housekeeper. He discovers Baines meeting up with another woman Julie (Michele Morgan) and is told to keep it a secret from Mrs Baines. However, she finds out with disastrous consequences...This film is well acted. Ralph Richardson gives a performance that holds back a little and is just on the right side of frustrating while my favourites in the cast are Sonia Dresdel and Dennis O'Dea who plays "Inspector Crowe". Scenes that stand out for me include the section where Mrs Baines is hiding in the house one night and we get a genuinely scary moment. I also found Inspector Crowe extremely watchable in his attempt to get the truth from Phillipe towards the end of the film and he delivers the wonderful line - "Will someone get this child out of here!" I found the film involved me gradually as it played out. The beginning was pretty mild and not very exciting as we focus on the rather annoying Phillipe with his strange accent. They should have cast someone else. However, the dialogue wins through at the end of the day and he gets some great lines, eg, when the police are in the middle of their investigation, he confides to Julie "we must think up more lies and keep telling them". Brilliant. And when he discovers that Mrs Baines has killed his pet "MacGregor", he puts forward the following as the epitaph for the burial - "MacGregor - killed by Mrs Baines - and the date". Genius.Another great quote comes when Dora Bryan who plays a prostitute called "Rose" is given the job of trying to find out who Phillipe is when he shows up at the police station.

Before they made 'The Third Man', director Carol Reed and screenwriter Graham Greene collaborated on this mild-mannered suspense story, in which a precocious young boy's devotion to one of his father's servants is tested after he witnesses what appears to be his long-suffering idol pushing his wicked wife to her death down a flight of stairs. An investigation follows, but the film isn't really a mystery since the audience already knows more about what happened than any of the characters on screen. Truth will prevail, although the outcome is ambiguous: the police set matters straight, but they do so from a clue that has no connection to the suspected crime. If the film appears dated today it's only because they don't often make them of this high caliber anymore.