Into the Darkness

Carol Reed’s cinematic depiction of The Fallen Idol (1948) is an incredible adaptation of the Graham Greene story. The slow-but-steady movement of the plot keeps the viewer interested until it finally takes off; dragging the audience along through twists and turns. The overall feel of the work was very much like that of a Greene story: it kept you asking questions to the last moment, made you want to know what happens next, and when you finally thought you knew where the plot was going, you really didn’t. The film is riveting and enjoyable to watch and I found no real fault with it apart from a few rough cuts that one comes to expect from movies of the period.

Although Reed incorporates many cinematic elements throughout the film, the scene where Phile fled from home offered an especially masterful use of lighting. Phile believes that he has just witnessed Mr. Baines, his idol, murder Mrs. Baines. The dark midnight setting not only reflects the grim feeling of death, but also leads the audience to infer a deeper metaphor. Phile’s once revered idol, Mr. Baines, has not only plunged from his proverbial pedestal as a heroic influence, but has literally and figuratively left Phile alone in darkness. Confused and shocked, Phile runs through the night and eventually meets a policeman. Here we see a very interesting event take place: Phile refuses to trust the policeman by not taking his hand and further refuses to trust the police back at the station. However, it appears that he does trust the woman at the station, which leaves an odd suggestion: has Phile’s loss of trust in Mr. Baines led to a loss of trust in men altogether and a reinforced trust in women? Continuing with Greene’s themes, it appears that the answer to this question is “yes”.

One of Greene’s most foremost themes in this piece is that of Loyalty and Betrayal. However, the clear loyalty that Phile had to Baines is shaken when Phile believes he witnesses Mrs. Baines’s murder. The made up story about Africa that Baines told Phile led to the belief that Baines could in fact be a murderer and thus makes Phile accept the idea that Baines murdered his wife without a second guess. When speaking to the detectives, Phile attempts to remain loyal to Baines, but instead contradicts Baines’s story, which leads to a long period of cross-examining the two tales. Baines had always instructed Phile that secrets and occasional lies are sometimes good and through this instruction, Phile almost causes Baines to be locked up in prison. It is not until Julie tells Phile that Baines never killed anyone in Africa and that Phile must stop lying that Phile realizes that secrets and lies really are not all that good. Phile’s sees the mistake he has made and now shows his inclination to listen to Julie instead of Baines. Now, Phile’s loyalty has shifted to a female figure of Julie, who tells the truth instead of the male figure of Baines who tells lies. The ending of the movie further reinforces this when Phile’s mother returns home and is the first to greet him with open arms. We see that through the death of Mrs. Baines, old loyalties to Baines deteriorate and shift to women. Even though Phile’s previous encounters with Mrs. Baines were negative, her death leads to the birth of a new perception.