Playing hooky for Dirk Bogarde's films

 

I played hooky last Tuesday this week because after all it isn’t every day I get a chance to watch seven Dirk Bogarde films in a row, courtesy of TCM. And Bogarde, hands down, is one of my favorite actors, perhaps my favorite. I always associate him with psychological thrillers, (The Servant, Accident, The Night Porter) having a persona evoking intelligence and sophistication hiding a malevolent nature. But as these films show – and he actually starred in more than 70 others – he had a kaleidoscopic range. Bogarde was also an intellectual having written several novels, a sweeping memoir, journalism, and he was a painter.....The first film was Cast a Dark Shadow (Lewis Gilbert 1955). It has Bogarde at his film noirish best, the killer of women – wives – for profit. Bogarde said he loved the “unwholesomeness of the hero.” See what I mean? The superb Margaret Lockwood plays opposite and “pound for pound” they are a dual who have met their match. The next film was Libel (Anthony Asquith 1959). Again we have Bogarde as the alleged nefarious character, an imposter concealing his true identity even from his wife (Olivia de Havilland). He also plays a dual role as a wartime buddy and an uncanny lookalike, the basis of the story’s plot. The flic also features a terrific courtroom drama and is a whodunit that will keep you guess right to the end. Next, The Angel Wore Red (Nunnally Johnson 1960) a very different kind of film where Bogarde plays, of all things (but then he

played a wide character variety) a Catholic priest. A rebel, he quits the Spanish church during that country’s civil war, finding himself on knife’s edge as he appeases the ruling Communists yet is constantly suspected of being a Franco rebel. It’s really a love story with his character surreptitiously becoming involved with a prostitute played by Ava Gardner. A bit draggy but still worth the watch. The next film was Victim (Basil Dearden 1961) in which Bogarde plays Melville Farr, an up-and-coming barrister investigating, with personal implications, a blackmail ring targetting London gay men during a time when homosexuality was outlawed. Here Bogarde’s is a character of high integrity employing some skullduggery against those – self-described moralists – who sought to do major harm to very innocent men. The fifth film The Password is Courage (Andrew L. Stone 1962) has to be a model for the 1960s hit TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, the similarities are just too many. Based on a true memoir of a Brit POW, this amusing take has Bogarde as the protagonist who leads a group of Stalig prisoners as they mock, undermine and sabotage various German works. The camp leadership appear as imbeciles as Bogarde (in the subsequent Hogan role) proves the real one in charge and yes there is even a heavy set model for the TV sitcom’s “I see nothing!” Sgt. Schultz. Sixth on the agenda was Our Mother’s House (Jack Clayton 1967), a dark drama of a group of children whose mother dies leaving them to run the house by themselves. Bogarde as Charlie Hook, their dad, estranged and a carousing

womanizer and gambler, haphazardly returns to take over the household, with mixed results. Finally, there was the sublime Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti 1971) an atmospheric piece based on the Thomas Mann story of a famed composer trying to recover his health in the Italian city. A study of fame, loneliness, art, homosexuality, beauty and longing, if you’re not swept away by the stunning visuals you will be by the Mahler score. Bogarde’s character is restrained with few words but these and his physical gestures are enough to define an aging artist coming to terms with his career and life.

You can catch more Bogarde when the Criterion Channel highlights several of his films March 28: The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954), Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), Victim (1961), The Servant (1963), Darling (1965), Accident (1967), The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), The Night Porter (1974).