The Fallen Idol is one of the great films about… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

The Fall­en Idol is one of the great films about the loss of child­hood innocence

30 Sep 2018

Words by Adam Scovell

Three well-dressed people, two men and one woman, sitting at a table in a café or restaurant. The image is in black and white.
Three well-dressed people, two men and one woman, sitting at a table in a café or restaurant. The image is in black and white.
Car­ol Reed’s 1948 clas­sic cap­tures the tran­si­tion to adult­hood in all its con­tra­dic­tions and hypocrisies.

Childhood’s end is nev­er a straight­for­ward precipice. Instead, a long, mean­der­ing gap appears between youth and adult­hood that varies depend­ing upon an infi­nite array of per­son­al, social and even eco­nom­ic fac­tors. Yet the begin­ning of this process can be marked indi­vid­u­al­ly and, in cin­e­ma, this has rarely been bet­ter por­trayed than in Car­ol Reed’s 1948 film The Fall­en Idol.

Based on a short sto­ry by Gra­ham Greene, the film fol­lows one of these very par­tic­u­lar moments when the wor­ry-free world of a child becomes marked by the oncom­ing real­i­ty of adult­hood with all of its con­tra­dic­tions and hypocrisies. Allow­ing such a nar­ra­tive to unfold through naïve eyes pro­duces a stark but empa­thet­ic sto­ry that reflects and reminds us of some per­son­al equiv­a­lent, even if it is like­ly far from the clear wealth and priv­i­lege of the lives on show.

The Fall­en Idol fol­lows a few days in the pleas­ant life of Philippe (Bob­by Hen­rey), the son of a diplo­mat liv­ing in the high-ceilinged wealth of an embassy in Bel­gravia (Grosvenor Cres­cent, to be exact, where Reed lat­er filmed 1968’s Oliv­er!). Philippe is left alone for large peri­ods of time in the care of the embassy but­ler, Baines (Ralph Richard­son), and his wife, Mrs Baines (Sonia Dres­del). Baines has con­coct­ed a fan­tas­ti­cal, colo­nial his­to­ry for him­self in order to keep Philippe enter­tained but also as a dis­trac­tion from his dis­in­te­grat­ing mar­riage. He is hav­ing an affair with a younger work­er at embassy, Julie (Michèle Mor­gan), whom Philippe meets by chance.

How­ev­er, Mrs Baines is sus­pi­cious and, when the boy acci­den­tal­ly gives away the affair, she hides in wait in the house for the pair to be caught. Find­ing the affair in full swing, Mrs Baines flies into a rage, hurt­ing Philippe and try­ing to gain access to the room in which she believes Julie to be. She climbs onto a bal­cony but is pushed off by an open­ing win­dow, falling to her death at the bot­tom of the stairs. Philippe runs away believ­ing, false­ly, that he has seen Baines kill his wife. The police become ever more sus­pi­cious as the boy’s desire to pro­tect his hero lends cre­dence to the false sus­pi­cion of mur­der at Baines’ hands.

One of Reed’s sig­na­ture cin­e­mat­ic tech­niques is to play with the camera’s per­spec­tive. In The Third Man, we are left in the dark for as long as its con­fused main char­ac­ter (Joseph Cot­ton), blun­der­ing with him through Vienna’s bat­tered streets, while in Odd Man Out, the cam­era stut­ters and stag­gers as the injured Irish Nation­al­ist (James Mason) tries to evade the police. The Fall­en Idol is more dis­arm­ing than both of those bril­liant films as its per­spec­tive is so inno­cent, so helpless.

When the tragedies of adult­hood become slow­ly appar­ent, the pathos is almost unbear­able as Reed frames every­thing through Philippe’s eyes. His wit­ness­ing of a mur­der which isn’t real­ly a mur­der and his blind­ness to the affair are all sim­ply part of his per­cep­tion as a child. It’s the nat­ur­al view of some­one with tof­fees stuck togeth­er in their pock­ets and a pet snake hid­den behind a loose brick in the wall. Through high­light­ing this view­point, the main crux of the film – the loss of faith in author­i­ty fig­ures and, over­all, the truth – becomes all the more affect­ing. Richardson’s per­for­mance is per­fect in build­ing this up with his match­es lit with sin­gle, per­fect strikes and a pen­chant for sneak­ing iced buns in between meals.

He’s the part­ner-in-crime every child­hood cries out for, espe­cial­ly one with clear­ly dis­tanced, busy par­ents. We feel the hurt of his betray­al and fall from grace because Philippe feels it. At the end, author­i­ty was built on a jum­ble of enter­tain­ing lies which hid things beyond the com­pre­hen­sion of the young boy. The final tragedy being how the last instance of truth telling no longer mat­ters, shrugged off by the police in a slight mix-up; where fal­si­ty led to the truth of Baines’ inno­cence with thank­ful serendip­i­ty. Philippe is only real­ly saved from his shak­en faith by the arrival of his par­ents and even then, the film ends before any­thing else is confirmed.

The Fall­en Idol is essen­tial­ly about that first, tear­ing loss of child­hood inno­cence – the first moment when the fal­lac­i­es and imper­fec­tions of those we look up to and idolise become appar­ent. In spite of its play­ful atmos­phere and the nat­ur­al draw­ing-room warmth that British cin­e­ma of this peri­od was drenched in, Reed’s film presents this moment laced with sad­ness. High­light­ing the child­ish­ness of com­plete trust in our elders cre­ates an alarm­ing and melan­cholic effect over­all. We’ve got to think of lies and tell them all the time,” sug­gests Philippe, and then they won’t find out the truth.” The first step out of child­hood nev­er felt more acute­ly painful. Though it was ulti­mate­ly inevitable and the great­est tragedy is that it always will be.

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