THE FALLEN IDOL II – Ralph Richardson, Michèle Morgan

Ralph Richardson in The Fallen Idol

THE FALLEN IDOL Review: Part I
Things are cleared up before the end, after a number of plot contrivances — not the least of which is the mediocre police investigation. Compounding matters, The Fallen Idol offers subpar acting (Henrey and Morgan phone in their performances), stereotyped characters (e.g., the cops and a Cockney prostitute), and some bad cinematography by Georges Périnal. Again, it’s not that the images are in themselves bad; it’s just that they are inaptly applied to the situations in which the characters find themselves. For instance, angles are skewed in an attempt to add tension to banal scenes, an approach made worse by William Alwyn’s melodramatic musical score, which stands in stark contrast [...]

THE FALLEN IDOL d: Carol Reed

The Fallen Idol (1948)
Direction: Carol Reed
Screenplay: Graham Greene, from his short story "The Basement Room"; additional dialogue by Lesley Storm and William Templeton
Cast: Ralph Richardson, Bobby Henrey, Michèle Morgan, Sonia Dresdel, Denis O’Dea, Jack Hawkins, Walter Fitzgerald
 

Michèle Morgan, Ralph Richardson in The Fallen Idol
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
The 1948 drama The Fallen Idol is the third film I’ve seen by British filmmaker Carol Reed. I’d previously watched the dreadful Oscar-winning musical Oliver! (1968) and the stolid Charlton Heston biopic of Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). True, I’ve also seen The Third Man, the 1949 thriller attributed to Reed, though I’ve always hedged upon taking the stance that it was Reed’s film alone and not an Orson Welles [...]

Best Films – 1947

Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, David Farrar in Black Narcissus
FILM
Black Narcissus
d, scr: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Cheyenne
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Alan Le May, Thames Williamson
Crossfire
d: Edward Dmytryk; scr: John Paxton
Down to Earth
d: Alexander Hall; scr: Edwin Blum, Don Hartman
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
d: Joseph L. Mankiewicz; scr: Philip Dunne
Life with Father
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Donald Ogden Stewart
Miracle on 34th Street
d, scr: George Seaton
Monsieur Vincent
d: Maurice Cloche; scr: Jean Bernard Luc, Jean Anouilh
Mourning Becomes Electra
d, scr: Dudley Nichols
Nicholas Nickleby
d: Alberto Cavalcanti; scr: John Dighton
The Perils of Pauline
d: George Marshall; scr: P. J. Wolfson, Frank Butler
 
CHECK THESE OUT
Body and Soul
d: Robert Rossen; scr: Abraham Polonsky
A Double Life
d: George Cukor; [...]