Libel
Directed by Anthony Asquith
Written by Anatole de Grunwald and Karl Tunberg from a play by Edward Wooll
1959/UK/USA
De Grunwald Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant
“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,/ Is the immediate jewel of their souls:/ Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;/ ’twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;/ But he that filches from me my good name/ Robs me of that which not enriches him, / And makes me poor indeed.” ― William Shakespeare, Othello
Add a title like Libel to names like Anthony Asquith, Olivia de Havilland and Dirk Bogarde and I am intrigued. Unfortunately, the implausible plot of this amnesia-flick-meets- courtroom-drama undid much of that good will by its end.
Sir Mark Loddon (Bogarde) came back from the war a changed man. His time as a POW and traumatic escape has left him without memory of key events and has turned his hair prematurely grey. His patient loving wife Margaret (De Havilland) soothes his nerves following his numerous nightmares.
Sir Mark and Lady Loddon live in one of those British stately homes that is open to the public for tours. Mark’s fellow prisoner Jeffrey Buckingham happens to see a TV program on the house. He becomes obsessed with exposing Sir Mark as an impostor and takes his case to a tabloid newspaper with little love for the aristocrat.
It turns out that Sir Mark also shared quarters at POW camp with an actor called Frank Welney (also Bogarde) who bore him an uncanny resemblance. Buckingham’s contention is that Sir Mark died during the escape, probably at Welney’s hands, and that Welney used the information gained during their confinement to marry Sir Mark’s fiancee and steal his title.
Sir Mark brings an action for libel and about half of the film is taken up with the trial. Things start looking might bad for our protagonist. With Robert Morely as Sir Mark’s attorney and Wilfred Hyde-White as the lawyer for the newspaper.
I was looking forward to this one and felt let down. All the acting is fine but the plot really is so contrived that my eyes started hurting from all the rolling they were doing. I think it might have been a mistake to have Bogarde play both parts. De Havilland is kind of wasted in a part that consists mostly in a lot of hand-wringing. You can’t win them all.
Libel was Oscar-nominated for Best Sound.
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