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Question of noblesse oblige, the great Ealing serial killer. Nothing concentrates the mind like an encroaching execution, says Dr. Johnson, the prisoner (Dennis Price) pens his memoirs-confession and looks forward to a light breakfast before the gallows. The disowned scion of the eloping noblewoman and the Italian tenor, he gazes back at "the most sensational criminal endeavor of the century": Standing between him and dukedom are eight irksome clan members, the spree is fueled by filial vengeance and class protest. "It is so difficult to make a neat job of killing people with whom one is not on friendly terms." Alec Guinness sketches the aristocratic grotesques with virtuosic variety, entitled twit and addled cleric and bellicose general and feisty suffragette and more. The canoe over the waterfall, the pricked air balloon, paraffin in the darkroom, poison in the wine and explosives in the caviar, the methodical pruning of the family tree. "From here, the wound should be consistent with the story I shall tell." Jaundiced elegance is what the tale calls for and that's what Robert Hamer supplies, an embroidered cloth over a caustic caldron, sparkling as Congreve and ferocious as Pound. The Edwardian path toward the medieval castle passes through the gracious widow (Valerie Hobson), the detour finds the coquettish mistress (Joan Greenwood) who matches the protagonist in cunning. A Don Giovanni aria, a Tennyson quote and a verse in bogus Matabele add to the attentive soundscape, which is above all about the precision of the English language when delivered by the epigrammatic Price. Poor relations and murderous manners in the Verdoux shadow, a view of status understood by the hangman ("After using the silken rope, never again be content with hemp"). Buñuel in Ensayo de un Crimen relishes and revises the joke. With Audrey Fildes, Miles Malleson, Clive Morton, John Penrose, Cecil Ramage, and Hugh Griffith. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |