Two unloved men are on the run. One is seven-year-old orphan Jon Whitely. His foster parents are cruel and he has just set the kitchen curtains on fire. He runs for cover and into the second, Dirk Bogarde, standing over the corpse of the man he has just murdered, his wife's lover.
Dirk doesn't run away. He keeps trying to get rid of the child, but he can't. He flees from London to Scotland, and Whitely follows close behind. It is in that bizarre relationship that, with few words, two portraits are drawn. Whitely is a small boy who has been mistreated by everyone, and Bogarde does not mistreat him. As for Bogarde... well, as the movie continues, we begin to see him as Whitely grown up in a world where everyone thinks of himself, and never of him: a wife who betrays him; a brother who rejects him. His performance, driven and stuck in the moment, until the very end, speaks volumes. He doesn't know either. He just has a stubborn sense of right and wrong, and he acts on it, always in the moment.
It's a great performance under the direction of Charles Crichton, far better known for his Ealing comedies, and A FISH CALLED WANDA comedies of the unloved and unnoticed who tear at the heart of people who actually bother to look at them.
Dirk doesn't run away. He keeps trying to get rid of the child, but he can't. He flees from London to Scotland, and Whitely follows close behind. It is in that bizarre relationship that, with few words, two portraits are drawn. Whitely is a small boy who has been mistreated by everyone, and Bogarde does not mistreat him. As for Bogarde... well, as the movie continues, we begin to see him as Whitely grown up in a world where everyone thinks of himself, and never of him: a wife who betrays him; a brother who rejects him. His performance, driven and stuck in the moment, until the very end, speaks volumes. He doesn't know either. He just has a stubborn sense of right and wrong, and he acts on it, always in the moment.
It's a great performance under the direction of Charles Crichton, far better known for his Ealing comedies, and A FISH CALLED WANDA comedies of the unloved and unnoticed who tear at the heart of people who actually bother to look at them.