Picturegoer – Mar 3rd 1953
It’s Bogarde’s Appointment in London
At last, Dirk Bogarde’s really on the run – from crook and spiv roles
by Margaret Hinxman
It needed Appointment In London to prove conclusively that Dirk Bogarde is the foremost younger actor on the British screen. We might have suspected as much before, of course during the long patches of his finely tensed-up playing in Hunted, or while watching his screaming neurotic of a killer in The Blue Lamp.
But, until now, Bogarde seemed the actor who hadn’t quite …. And in Appointment In London, one of next week’s releases, the previously only briefly-glimpsed ability to get under the skin and into the mind of character is fully revealed.
The film takes an ordinary young man, who might have known no more terrifying excitements than a hardly-won tennis match victory, or a two-shilling deficit in the firm’s books, had war not caught up with him.
But war elevates him to the rank of wing commander, gives him the responsibility of running a squadron and burdens him with an unreasoning obsession to reach his ninetieth-operation mark.
When we meet him, he has borne the weight of his duties too long. He has worried too much and bottled up his feelings too tautly. He has the dead, dank weariness of a man who needs more than a good night’s sleep to revive his spirits.
That ninetieth operation is only three sorties away. He’ll make it; he’ll make it if it kills him – and secretly, fearfully, he half believes that it will.
Familiar – But True
Familiar? Of course, it’s a familiar character. A product of war, he naturally figures prominently in nearly every war film produced. With variations, we’ve watched, most importantly, Gregory Peck play him in Twelve O’Clock High – and John Wayne, Richard Widmark, William Holden, Clark Gable, in lesser pieces.
It’s not a familiarity to be criticized; for there’s a lot of truth in it.
The point about Bogarde’s portrayal is that it is unmistakably his own. It draws nothing from the interpretations of other fine actors. It is, so to speak, a personal declaration.
As understood by Bogarde, the character adheres to none of the conventions. He doesn’t go in for the half-schoolboy, half-hysterical stridency of so many American war film heroes; nor yet the exasperating understatement and stiff-upper-lip courage of the British heroes.
A low-keyed performance most of the way, it suddenly bursts into flame here and there as the carefully controlled temper of the “Wing Co.” breaks out unaccountably.
It’s a good war film and yet, for all the expertness of the direction and acting, it is Bogarde who pulls it together, gives it point and vigour. Study him as he watches a limping plane making for the airfield only the tiny muscles in his jaw betray his tensed feelings; hear him flay a pilot officer for breaches in security measures; see him suffer the interrogation of a sadly bitter young widow, with her inevitable question: “were you there, when he was killed?”… Yes, Bogarde’s grip on the film is relentless.
His Turning Point
Almost certainly Appointment In London will be greeted as that turning point so frequently cited when promising screen careers are under discussion. Only this time it will be justified.
For an actor who bas been so successful in his film career – and in a surprisingly short space of time – Bogarde has also been unlucky. If he was a hit – in Boys In Brown, Esther Waters, Once A Jolly Swagman – the films weren’t all that. Where the films were interesting – The Woman In Question, The Gentle Gunmann – Bogarde’s was never the king-pin character. And in the happy combination of top-ranking film and first-class role – most notably in The Blue Lamp and Hunted – it was crime, crime, all the way.
For Bogarde, too, the drift into fluffy light comedy, Penny Princess, was not an unqualified success. Strangely enough, there was a leaden quality about his comedy-playing that was never apparent in his heaviest dramatic portrayals.
Significant Flashes
Yet, although we have had to wait for Appointment In London to find the actor of dramatic maturity, there have been occasional revelations of a deep insight into human behaviour.
Remember that gruelling sequence, in Quartet, about the young pianist who preferred to die rather than live with the knowledge that he could never make a great concert player? It was Bogarde who gave the story sensitivity.
And remember, too, the bond between little boy and hero in Hunted? The complete at-oneness between the two was largely responsible for the remarkable humanity that rippled through the film. But these were the hors d’oeuvre; Appointment In London, the main satisfying dish.
Appointment In London reached the West End, Bogarde went on record as saying that he doubted whether the critics would like him in the piece. But after the press show of the film, the critics proved the star wrong on that score.
And it’s my bet that picturegoers will find their appointment with Bogarde worth keeping, too.
