A Film Canon

The Fallen Idol eccentrically identifies a child's point-of-view with extreme high-angle shots, as little Philippe's (Bobby Henrey) abandonment by his ambassador parents results in a series of lonely observations from the stairways, landings, windows and balconies of their inner-city mansion, and, more specifically, in a hypothetical sight-line from his bedroom, on the upper storey, to the kitchen and servants' quarters, in the basement, that corresponds to his prohibited, furtive friendship with Baines, the butler (Ralph Richardson); that is, a reification of his status as a privileged child, in which every index of luxury is simultaneously one of isolation, and every pleasure takes place at the edge of a vast precipice. To this end, Reed and screenwriter Graham Greene elaborate this precipice, building the narrative around Mrs Baines' fatal fall from a windowsill while watching Philippe, Baines and Baines' mistress (Michele Morgan) at play, and the subsequent aspersions cast upon Baines, which only Philippe can remedy, albeit indirectly. That said, this remedy is postponed, both for the sake of an extensive forensic investigation into the vertical parameters of the household and, more impressively, to dwell upon the manner in which this consolidates Philippe's position into an unusual form of vertigo, insofar as its parameters aren't exclusively vertical, but invoked by every object or situation that signifies his detachment from Baines; vertigo as a nascent, naive approximation of class consciousness, detached even from the horizontal register of Odd Man Out. From this perspective, the second half of the film - commencing with the extraordinary game of hide- and-seek that forms the backdrop to the crime - represents a peculiarly (if subtly) politicised expressionism, while the overly neat ending is offset by the lack of any real reunion between Philippe and his parents, and his ambiguous relation to Baines' innocence.