The Rat

Anton Walbrook is the Rat, the most feared burglar in all of Montmartre. A friend facing the guillotine asks him to take care of his girl, Rene Ray, and he does so, treating her as a child, even as she falls in love with him. When Ruth Chatterton comes slumming to the bar, she sees something exciting in him. When he goes to her home to steal her pearls, he changes his mind and they begin dating.

It's a remake of Ivor Novello's smash hit of the stage and silent screen, and Walbrook is pretty good in the role. Miss Chatterton was at the tail end of her movie career, making a couple of programmers for director Jack Raymond, and she offers her usual fine performance.

Over all, it's an acceptable movie, relying heavily on the reputation of the earlier versions and a big courtroom scene at the end. Mostly, though it's Walbrook and Miss Chatterton who make this worthwhile.

This was a solid little melodrama about the Parisian underworld, its denizens and visitors. Anton Walbrook plays Jean Bucheron aka the Rat, a cat-burglar with a heart of, well, at least bronze, maybe silver. A friend on death-row, about to go to his rendez-vous with la guillotine, sends for Jean to ask him to take care of his daughter, the innocent young Odile. By "take care of", the friend means "keep your hands off of", which Jean manages to do, for awhile. Besides keeping his own hands off, Jean is also called upon to fend off a persistent madam (who seems to have no goal in life but to recruit Odile) and some sort of ugly sailor.

Zelia, a wealthy woman played by Ruth Chatterton, goes on a little police-escorted slumming trip with her odious boyfriend, and they end up at Jean's usual haunt just in time to interrupt his plans to kill his ex-partner in a knife fight. Zelia decides she wants to meet the handsome young knife-fighter and asks the chief of police to introduce her. The chief of police says "you don't want to meet him, he's a very unpleasant character" and Zelia responds "but I know so many pleasant characters already..." She needles Jean into dancing with her, and later that night he cat-burgles his way into her boudoir, more to finish their conversation than to steal her pearls.

The two get chummy and evidently go on dates all over the place, though we only see the notes arranging the dates and not the dates themselves. Meanwhile Zelia's god-awful fiancée has taken a shine to Odile, which results in a murder, which results in legal trouble for Jean. Then it's time for the big courtroom scene, where everyone plays a game of Oneupsmanship Of Lies, with a trip to the guillotine for the winner.

Oh dear. The problem with this film is the source material. Originally a screenplay for which its author Ivor Novello could find no takers, he was persuaded by his friend, actress Constance Collier, to turn it into a stage play. They collaborated on the adaptation under a pseudonym, and the result was a big hit in 1924; a successful film version followed, again with Novello in the lead, in 1925, and there were sequels in 1926 and 1928. (The critics did not care for any of its incarnations.) But by the time this sound remake came along in 1937, the whole thing was distinctly old hat. A never-never land Parisian underworld in which a dashing jewel thief is torn between an innocent girl entrusted to his care by her criminal father and a society woman slumming for her own amusement may have worked onstage thanks to the power of Novello's personality, and in silent film where the absence of spoken dialogue had already established a never-never land in which various improbabilities and implausibilities might be swallowed. However, a sound film is a different matter. The melodramatic clichés come thick and fast, and there isn't much anyone can do to disguise their familiarity and predictability.

The Rat's morality is curiously conservative (the original versions wouldn't have landed so successfully if it hadn't have been): although initially mean and short-tempered, he comes to worship René Ray's worshipful ingenue; considers the cocottes he normally associates with (and from whom he must previously chosen his sexual partners) as 'dirty'; and during a final argument with the society lady whose lover he has become, he snarls, 'At least I do not live off women.' O-kay... I mean, he sneaks into their apartments in the middle of the night and steals their jewellery, but I suppose that doesn't count...?

The film is only 72 minutes, but feels longer, never a good sign. There are only two reasons to see it: the performances of Anton Walbrook and Ruth Chatterton, both markedly superior to their surroundings. Mary Clare is also good fun as the duplicitous procuress, Mere Colline. By the by, if the then eighteen-year-old Betty Marsden of later Round the Horne fame is in this, as the IMDb says, she is not playing Chatterton's maid: that performer is a woman in late middle age.

At long last, the BFI has restored the surviving elements for this rare British talkie and it has been released on DVD http://networkonair.com/shop/2169-rat-the-5027626430641.html The main reason for watching the film is Anton Walbrook who gives a wonderful performance (as always) in the title character. Ruth Chatteron left Hollywood to make this, but it was to prove her penultimate film. At one point she says her age is 34 when in fact she was ten years older in real life.

At 70 minutes, the pace is brisk and there are some well-known faces in the supporting cast.

Well worth getting this one - a rare little gem.