In wartime London, a man and woman chat at an auction of the Rohan family estate. It turns out that she is Clarissa Rohan (Phyllis Calvert), a direct descendent of the family, and he is RAF pilot Peter Rokeby (Stewart Granger) who has a less direct Rohan connection. After looking through several small pieces, they agree to meet again on the second day of the auction. Meanwhile, we flashback to the 1800's to see Hesther Shaw (Margaret Lockwood) arrive at Miss Patchett's school for girls. She is poor and standoffish but the perky, popular Clarissa Richmond (Calvert) befriends her. A fortune teller tells Clarissa that she will marry a man in grey but that she should be wary of female friends; the teller glances at Hesther's palm then nervously refuses to tell her fortune. Hesther runs away to elope with an ensign, and when Miss Pratchett bans anyone from ever speaking of her, Clarissa leaves as well. She soon makes a good impression in high society, and when the mother of brooding bachelor Lord Rohan (James Mason) decides he should settle down, she sets him up with Clarissa, mostly because she want a legitimate heir (the implication being that Rohan may have any number of bastards around town). Years later, Clarissa has a son she rarely sees and she and her husband largely lead separate lives. She runs into Hesther who is in a traveling acting troupe with the handsome Swinton Rokeby (Granger) as her leading man. Feeling sorry about Hesther's reduced circumstances, Clarissa offers her a job as a governess, but she should have remembered the fortune teller's advice from years ago. When Rokeby gets involved, a romantic quadrangle develops which goes sour with betrayal, revenge, and eventually murder.
This is sometimes pinpointed as the movie that started a vogue in British cinema for period romantic melodramas. It's a mixed bag that should work better than it does. Calvert is quite good, Lockwood a little less so, mainly because her character remains more a means to a narrative end rather than a fleshed-out person. I'm not usually a fan of Granger, but he's pretty good here, and more handsome than he was as he aged. Mason is a little disappointing, giving a one-note performance as the sinister Rohan who is not as active in the plot as you might expect. Despite him being the title character, it's Granger who is more memorable. Leslie Arliss, son of the actor George Arliss, directs in an unflashy way. The movie's biggest misstep is the casting of a young white boy (Antony Scott) in full blackface as a servant boy who pops up at several points in the story. Scott tries his best, but the makeup is so phony and egregious, a modern viewer is taken out of the story. Every so often, you think this is going to go full gothic but disappointingly, it never does. The film does return briefly to the wartime frame story, but only so it doesn’t feel like it's leaving us hanging. Pictured are Mason and Lockwood. [TCM]
1 comment:
I've not seen this one, although I have seen a couple of the later Gainsborough pictures (including, naturally, The Wicked Lady). I've not seen Granger's early work, only his later films (he's amusingly detached in a couple of 60s German westerns); I've never either liked or disliked him. I'm surprised that you weren't impressed by Mason - this is usually regarded as the start of his purple patch; although it doesn't sound like a great part.
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