Le Corrupteur

The review in London's Time Out Film Guide slags off this horror vehicle from '71-72. In the '60s Brando's career had dipped but his cameo as the earthy sensual Irish valet Peter Quint shows just what flair he had at a fallow time and is worth reappraising in line with his flair performance in the adventure film Burn! (1968-1971) produced prior to this Late-Victorian set prequel to Henry James' Turn of the Screw and his renaissance in The Godfather ('71-72) and Last Tango in Paris ('72-73). In fact, Brando explained that he was of '...mostly Irish origins..' in his auto-biography ''Songs My Mother Taught Me'' (1994) relating to the Peter Quint character. In appearance he sports a thick tweed jacket, long silverhair and striped collarless shirt and those handsome aquiline chiselled facial features. He is fascinating to watch whether stumbling home from a country pub whilst drunk, imbibing whiskey from a flask while sporting a dinner jacket and upturned collar, or reciting stories from his past to the entranced child characters. The early-'70s were pioneering years and it is fascinating to see US actor Brando recorded in that time and space in Cambridgeshire. Filmed at Sawston Hall, Sawston, Cambridgeshire and Cherry Hinton Chalk Pits, Cambridge in the winter of '70-71. Good support is given by Lancashire actress Thora Hird as Mrs Grose.