The Smugglers

The release date on the film is given as 1947 but I'm certain I saw it in 1946 aboard a Navy ship returning from service in the Pacific in World War II, and its title then was "The Smugglers." The cast was uncommonly fine (look at the list!)and the acting excellent in a very good Graham Greene story. What struck me was the intensity of the bond between the boy (Attenborough) and his guardian (Redgrave) whom he loves but, as I recall, betrays and brings to his death. There were few such representations on film in those days--I remember the friendship between Paris and Drake in "King's Row" and between George and Lennie in "Of Mice and Men," but not much else. Few people seem to know "The Man Within." That's a pity. It's an uncommonly good film.

This is an astounding study of misanthropy: Attenborough plays a weak, snivelling pup who is befriended, educated and protected by Redgrave--a father-figure--who happens to be a criminal (a smuggler); There are some similarities to "The Informer" here; the movie, incidentally, takes its title from (I think) a poem, with the line: "There is a man within me/ that's angry with me." Incidentally, I saw this film when it first was released in this country; I guess I was about 16, and it was one of the first "foreign" films I'd ever seen...and I guess it made quite an impression on me, because that was fifty years ago.

Actually I haven't seen the film. I've just finished reading The Man Within, which is complicated and powerful. I wanted to see if it had been filmed. Greene was after all a film fan and screenwriter as well as a hugely successful novelist.

Yes, the flyleaf quotes Browne: "There's another man within me that's angry with me." A lot of Greene's novels were filmed, including The Third Man, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair. I think novelists deserve hugely more credit than they get for successful adaptations.

Yes I know this post is slightly off-point.

Richard Attenborough (Andrews) is getting tortured at the beginning of the film. He recounts his tale to his torturers who are after the lowdown on top smuggler Michael Redgrave (Carlyon). Dickie was taken under the wing of Redgrave at a young age and put on the boats to assist Redgrave in his activities and make a man of the friendless youngster. Well, he remains friendless throughout the film. He's not popular and he's a grass. Everyone is after him.

Surprisingly, this is a colour film and has a very worn look about it, ie, the colours run and this adds to the charm. Unfortunately, the picture quality isn't very good - it's actually very poor in places. Still, it's watchable and the story is good. Looks like Redgrave is not a man to be messed with. He WILL find you.

The film has a strange message and is no way a blueprint for anyone who wants to enter a life of gangster glamour. If you act like Dickie you are a dead man.

Half a century ago Graham Greene specifically forbad that this adaptation of his 1929 novel be included in a season of films drawn from his work; it seems far more like Daphne Du Maurier so he may have had a point.

As austerity Britain emerged shivering from the harshest winter in living memory the great British public must have found the sight of a tousle-haired young Dickie Attenborough - playing a role spectacularly spineless even for him - stripped to the waist and threatened with hot irons bracing indeed (we later see him flogged by Ronald Shiner, which must have added insult to injury).

Despite the winning presence of titian-haired temptress Jean Kent and sweet young thing Joan Greenwood (the latter attempting what was presumably a Sussex accent) the implications of Attenborough's relationship with Michael Redgrave were plainly not lost on viewers at the time as the heading above drawn from a review by Angela Milne in 'The Observer' amply attests.