This is pretty good. I didn't know until the last few minutes whether Dirk Bogarde was the Fifth Earl Baronet of Chichester-on-Rhymes and Aylesworth House -- or whatever his title and estate were called -- or a lower-echelon con man who had taken his place.
Everything is hunky dory for the wealthy English aristocrat who lives happily with his wife, Olivia De Havilland,in his mansion. He's handsome, loving, and friendly, but he suffers from an uncertain memory due to unpleasant war experiences. He's an ex POW who spent a lot of time as an army major in a German prison camp; his companions were the low-brow actor, also played by Bogarde, who resembled him and was good at impersonations, and the Canadian Buckinham, who disapproves of the actor and his pretensions.
Years after the war, Buckinham shows up and accuses Bogarde of being NOT the Fourth Earl of Muckle-on-Yare and the Abbey Grange, but of being the ambitious actor instead. The actor presumably murdered the Duke during an escape and took his place, imitating him peerlessly, or rather peerfully.
Shanda! Bogarde takes the tabloid paper that printed the accusation to court and sues for libel. We're all rooting for the justification of the Viscount Greystoke because he seems like such a nice guy, but as the trial progresses more and more doubt is cast on his real identity and evidence emerges that suggests he did in fact murder the aristocratic Bogarde, First Baronet of Cumberbatch-on-Treacle, and took his place. Even his loving wife is convinced. Bogarde doesn't help. In the witness box he loses his poise, begins to stutter and sweat, and generally radiates an aura of deceit.
I'll leave it at that. The direction is competent, no more than that, but Bogarde is quite good, and De Havilland is as elegant as ever, British in style if not nationality. She came from the family that developed the famous De Havilland Mosquito during the war but was raised on the San Francisco peninsula. She attended the tiny Notre Dame High School in Saratoga, which has (or had until recently) a charming walled-in campus full of tall evergreens.
The movie doesn't exactly rush headlong through the narrative -- which is, I understand, taken from an old incident in France. It's not, say, "Witness for the Prosecution." It's less inventive, though hardly more believable. In all, worth catching. Nobody breaks down on the witness stand and cries out, "I DID IT. I DID IT! But I didn't want to kill him; I only wanted to FRIGHTEN him! (Sob.)"
Everything is hunky dory for the wealthy English aristocrat who lives happily with his wife, Olivia De Havilland,in his mansion. He's handsome, loving, and friendly, but he suffers from an uncertain memory due to unpleasant war experiences. He's an ex POW who spent a lot of time as an army major in a German prison camp; his companions were the low-brow actor, also played by Bogarde, who resembled him and was good at impersonations, and the Canadian Buckinham, who disapproves of the actor and his pretensions.
Years after the war, Buckinham shows up and accuses Bogarde of being NOT the Fourth Earl of Muckle-on-Yare and the Abbey Grange, but of being the ambitious actor instead. The actor presumably murdered the Duke during an escape and took his place, imitating him peerlessly, or rather peerfully.
Shanda! Bogarde takes the tabloid paper that printed the accusation to court and sues for libel. We're all rooting for the justification of the Viscount Greystoke because he seems like such a nice guy, but as the trial progresses more and more doubt is cast on his real identity and evidence emerges that suggests he did in fact murder the aristocratic Bogarde, First Baronet of Cumberbatch-on-Treacle, and took his place. Even his loving wife is convinced. Bogarde doesn't help. In the witness box he loses his poise, begins to stutter and sweat, and generally radiates an aura of deceit.
I'll leave it at that. The direction is competent, no more than that, but Bogarde is quite good, and De Havilland is as elegant as ever, British in style if not nationality. She came from the family that developed the famous De Havilland Mosquito during the war but was raised on the San Francisco peninsula. She attended the tiny Notre Dame High School in Saratoga, which has (or had until recently) a charming walled-in campus full of tall evergreens.
The movie doesn't exactly rush headlong through the narrative -- which is, I understand, taken from an old incident in France. It's not, say, "Witness for the Prosecution." It's less inventive, though hardly more believable. In all, worth catching. Nobody breaks down on the witness stand and cries out, "I DID IT. I DID IT! But I didn't want to kill him; I only wanted to FRIGHTEN him! (Sob.)"