SUBJECTS

Boys -- Drama, Butlers -- Drama, Child witnesses -- Drama, Greene, Graham, 1904- -- Film and video adaptations, Murder -- Investigation -- Drama

The Fallen Idol

In Conversation

  • David Thomson is author of The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies—and What They Have Done to Us; Have You Seen . . . ? A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films; and The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.

  • Headshot of Michael Ondaatje. Photo by Andy Langbon.

    Michael Ondaatje is the prizewinning author of The English Patient, among other books. He will join David Thomson in conversation after the screening.

featuring

Bobby Henrey, Ralph Richardson, Sonia Dresdel, Michèle Morgan,

The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane called The Fallen Idol “the most tightly drawn of all” the collaborations between writer Graham Greene and director Carol Reed. Lane writes, “Ralph Richardson plays Baines, the butler at a foreign embassy in London. The ambassador has gone away, leaving his young son, Philippe (Bobby Henrey), in the care of Baines and the hectoring Mrs. Baines (Sonia Dresdel). The plot, deft and quick, is rich in secrets. . . . As a study of the child who sees but cannot fully understand, the movie reaches back to Henry James’s What Maisie Knew, and as an introduction to the clammy grip of Greene it remains unsurpassed.”

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Graham Greene
Cinematographer
  • Georges Périnal
Print Info
  • B&W
  • DCP
  • 92 mins
Source
  • Rialto Pictures
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View The Fallen Idol documents  

Idol worship (review), Village Voice, J. Hoberman, 2004

Revivals in focus -- excerpt (review), Village Voice, Tom Allen, 1986

Alexander Korda (program note), National Film Theatre (London, England), Karol Kulik, 1976

The fallen idol (program note), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, C. A. Lejeune, 1971

The films of Sir Alexander Korda (flyer), Regency Theatre

Visual tropes: an analysis of The fallen idol (article), Style, Stuart Y. McDougal

The fallen idol (program note)

Displaying 7 of 7 publicly available documents.


View all The Fallen Idol documentation on CineFiles.