Notorious Gentleman

As the shared horrific experience of the Second World War was coming to an end, the last thing people wanted to see was the amusing misadventures of an over-privileged, work shy toff. Instead of a comedy, we get to see the grim consequences our hero's dissolute lifestyle.

Were it not for an intelligent witty script and Rex Harrison being so charming and likeable, this could have been a dark and moralistic sermon. The talented Frank Lauder and Sidney Gilliat team achieve the perfect balance here. They take a serious morality tale and transform it into a light, amusing upbeat drama which was necessary to make the film's message acceptable to an audience suffering the hell of the last six years.

Had this been made a decade earlier it would have been very different. To us watching now it would probably be funnier but it would have lacked the depth and gritty realism. As it transpired, you can now sympathise with Rex Harrison's character, you feel you want everything to work out for him, you want him to realise that he's a good man but you still don't like him.

It's a long film, beautiful Lilli Palmer isn't in it for long enough and the first half does meander quite a bit but nevertheless it's very easy watching, it's entertaining and you feel like you're watched something worthwhile.

This is a very arguable film for its tremendous richness of ambiguities. It is both one of the best films of Rex Harrison and of Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. The greatest credit lies perhaps with the script, but it is handled with brilliant eloquence and equilibration by all the actors, and their parts aren't easy. Rex Harrison is particularly excellent in his very debatable character of a perfect scoundrel who wins everyone by his charm and seems to get away with just anything just by his shameless audacity. His father, a politician, seems to forgive him anything and keeps on doing so until his death, while his female victims see him through but nevertheless also keep on loving him. The one you will remember is Lilli Palmer who becomes his wife, and they were also married for real outside the film studios. He is a man of many talents but nothing becomes of him, as he seems to live just for taking chances and enjoying risking his life for nothing, just to get a kick out of it. It's a kind of morality but without morals, it just states the case without taking any stand, and no one can be a judge in a case like this. You just observe it and enjoy its thrills and moments of temporary success and cheer, while all the time you have to worry about what will happen next as a consequence of his recklessness. The dialog is splendid and probably the best film ever created by Gilliat & Launder, but it leaves you with a kind of acid aftertaste, like as if you had to think "What a waste!" of a brilliant man letting his life just run like water off his hands. Long afterthoughts are unavoidable, and you will probably never forget it.

It is never an easy thing to watch a cad and bounder on film for 2 hours and come away feeling satisfied. But his film manages to do that because of it's wit and wonderful cast. Harrison is superb and Lili Palmer is at her very best. I had not seen this for 65 years and yet I remember it as though it was last week. One very odd goof in the film takes place in a car with Rex being driven by the character Jenny. He opens the door to get out before the car stops. He exits while the scenery goes whizzing by. One might expect to see him in a heap on the sidewalk. All in all, a lovely film with nice light touches and some very serious drama. GOOD SHOW

Rex Harrison plays a young man, Vivian, who thinks primarily of himself. He's somewhat witty, sort of daring, extremely unreliable. Though his character is tempered slightly as time goes on, as written the character is very obnoxious.

I didn't go to Oxford, as Vivian does for a time. But I went to an Ivy League school and I knew many people like him: showoffs who thumbed their nose at convention but wanted, and generally had, the money convention brings. I was transported back not just to the time of the film but also a few decades back to the wise guy cutups of my own college years.

Harrison does a good job. Indeed, he seems to be playing himself, though that was doubtless just fine acting. I like him in most of what I've seen, particularly in "Anna and the King of Siam" and the brilliant "Unfaithfully Yours." The rest of the cast is superb, too: His real-life wife of the time, Lilli Palmer is very charming. Playing an Austrian girl, she reminded me of Luise Rainer, sans music. Griffith Jones plays his ostensibly more stuffy friend. To me, he is infinitely more appealing in all regards. And Margaret Johnston is beauty and charm itself as Vivian's father's secretary.

It would be interesting to show this on a double-bill with "Look Back in Anger." That was written as an antidote to the "mustn't forget about tea" movies and especially plays that had preceded it.

Yet Jimmy Porter, its protagonist, comes across today just as badly as Harrison's character does. The acting in that film, too, is marvelous. But at the core of each is a character who is not just a boor: Jimmy and Vivian are really creeps, though we are not intended to think them so.

Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliiat utilised Rex Harrison's roguish charm to good effect in the rather lightweight 'Constant Husband' in 1955. Here we are ten years earlier with what is probably their best film and certainly one of Harrison's best performances. His plays Vivian Kenway, a man who is not exactly a jackpot of admirable character traits being a dissolute wastrel and spendthrift. Unlike the Rake in Hogarth's engravings of 1735 he does not descend into madness although at one stage it looks as if he might but redeems himself as a war hero. Although throughout most of the film Kenway's behaviour is reprehensible one cannot bring oneself to dislike him which is surely a testament to Harrison's portrayal. One has a sneaking admiration for his devil-may-care, something will turn up attitude and as for his success with women, it takes two to tango. The three principal women in his life are very contrasted.'It' plus 'It' equals 'chemistry' and that between Harrison and his then wife, the superlative Lilli Palmer, is there for all to see. Margaret Johnston is splendid and no one does 'flighty' quite as well as Jean Kent. Mention must be made of Godfrey Tearle's beautifully understated and moving performance as Kenway Senior. Needless to say some supposedly amoral scenes were trimmed for American audiences. The assertion by Gilliat that the film's title was changed to 'The Notorious Gentleman' so that Americans would not mistake it for a picture about gardening sounds too absurd to be true but I see no reason to doubt him! Kenway's character is essentially a microcosm of the type that thrived in the 1930's for whom the outbreak of war proved a death knell. This super film not only entertains but also captures an era. Rex Harrison's personal life was 'dramatic' to say the least and although one should not make a habit of confusing an actor with the parts he plays, it is interesting that Alexander Walker entitled his biography of Harrison 'Fatal Charm'!