The Rake's Progress | |
---|---|
Directed by | Sidney Gilliat |
Written by | Frank Launder Sidney Gilliat Val Valentine (story) |
Produced by | Frank Launder Sidney Gilliat |
Starring | Rex Harrison Lilli Palmer |
Cinematography | Wilkie Cooper |
Edited by | Thelma Connell |
Music by | William Alwyn |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Eagle-Lion Distributors |
Release date |
|
Running time | 120 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | $1,120,000 [1] |
Box office | over $1 million (US rentals) [2] |
The Rake's Progress is a 1945 British comedy-drama film. [3] In the United States, the title was changed to Notorious Gentleman. [4] The film caused controversy with U.S. censors of the time, who trimmed scenes for what was considered graphic amoral and sexual content. [4]
The plot follows the career of upper-class cad Vivian Kenway (Rex Harrison). He is sent down from Oxford University for placing a chamber pot on the Martyrs' Memorial. Sent to South America after his father pulls a favour from a friend, he is fired for heckling the managing director while drunk.
A friend offers him a job, but he responds by seducing his wife and is found out. His jobs decline, as he moves from employment as racing driver to shop assistant to dancing partner. He lives a life of womanising and heavy drinking and constantly runs up large debts, which his family has to pay. One girl tries to kill herself. Driving while drunk and taking risks, he crashes and causes the death of his father, Colonel Kenway (Godfrey Tearle). Kenway is eaten up by guilt in consequence. Another girl tries to rescue him.
The plot diverges from the theme of the Rake's Progress paintings by having him redeem himself by a hero's death in World War II.
Sidney Gilliat says the idea for the film came entirely from Val Valentine "he thought of it on the bus." [5] He also says Harrison never suggested Lili Palmer for the female lead it came from Frank Launder. [6]
The New York Times described the film as "an oddly deceptive affair which taxes precise classification. It plays like a comedy-romance, but all the way through it keeps switching with brutal abruptness to the sharpest irony...As a consequence, a curious unevenness of emphasis and mood prevails, and initial sympathy with the hero is frequently and painfully upset"; [7] while more recently, TV Guide wrote, "the film is filled with wit and style. It does not treat its unattractive subject with sympathy, yet remains sensitive and touching." [8]
Sir Reginald Carey "Rex" Harrison was an English actor. Harrison began his career on the stage at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1924. He made his West End debut in 1936 appearing in the Terence Rattigan play French Without Tears, in what was his breakthrough role. He won his first Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance as Henry VIII in the Broadway play Anne of the Thousand Days in 1949. He returned to Broadway portraying Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady (1956) where he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.
Justine Kay Kendall McCarthy was an English actress and comedienne. She began her film career in the musical film London Town (1946), a financial failure. Kendall worked regularly until her appearance in the comedy film Genevieve (1953) brought her widespread recognition. Prolific in British films, Kendall also achieved some popularity with American audiences, and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her role in the musical-comedy film Les Girls (1957).
Sidney Gilliat was an English film director, producer and writer.
Frank Launder was a British writer, film director and producer, who made more than 40 films, many of them in collaboration with Sidney Gilliat.
Green for Danger is a 1946 British thriller film, based on the 1944 detective novel of the same name by Christianna Brand. It was directed by Sidney Gilliat and stars Sally Gray, Trevor Howard, Rosamund John, Leo Genn, and Alastair Sim. The film was shot at Pinewood Studios in England. The title is a reference to the colour-coding used on the gas cylinders used by anaesthetists.
A Rake's Progress is a series of eight paintings by 18th-century English artist William Hogarth. The canvases were produced in 1732–1734, then engraved in 1734 and published in print form in 1735. The series shows the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, the spendthrift son and heir of a rich merchant, who comes to London, wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution and gambling, and as a consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam). The original paintings are in the collection of Sir John Soane's Museum in London, where they are normally on display for a short period each day.
Night Train to Munich is a 1940 British thriller film directed by Carol Reed and starring Margaret Lockwood and Rex Harrison. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1939 short story Report on a Fugitive by Gordon Wellesley, the film is about an inventor and his daughter who are kidnapped by the Gestapo after the Nazis march into Prague in the prelude to the Second World War. A British secret service agent follows them, disguised as a senior German army officer pretending to woo the daughter over to the Nazi cause.
Waterloo Road is a 1945 British film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring John Mills, Stewart Granger, and Alastair Sim. It is based on the Waterloo area of South London. According to the British Film Institute database, it is the third in an "unofficial trilogy" by Gilliat, preceded by Millions Like Us (1943) and Two Thousand Women (1944).
A Kid For Two Farthings is a 1955 British comedy-drama film directed by Carol Reed. The screenplay was adapted by Wolf Mankowitz from his 1953 novel of the same name. The title is a reference to the traditional Passover song, "Chad Gadya", which begins "One little goat which my father bought for two zuzim". At the end of the film, Mr. Kandinsky softly sings fragments of an English translation of the song.
Sir Godfrey Seymour Tearle was a British actor who portrayed the quintessential British gentleman on stage and in both British and US films.
London Belongs to Me is a British film released in 1948, directed by Sidney Gilliat, and starring Richard Attenborough and Alastair Sim. It was based on the novel London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins, which was also the basis for a seven-part series made by Thames Television shown in 1977.
Millions Like Us is a 1943 British propaganda film, showing life in a wartime aircraft factory in documentary detail. It stars Patricia Roc, Gordon Jackson, Anne Crawford, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, Moore Marriott and Eric Portman.
I See a Dark Stranger is a 1946 British World War II spy comedy film directed by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat and starred Deborah Kerr and Trevor Howard.
Kipps is a 1941 British comedy-drama film adaptation of H. G. Wells's 1905 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Carol Reed and stars Michael Redgrave as a draper's assistant who inherits a large fortune. The film's costumes were designed by Cecil Beaton.
Ring of Spies is a 1964 British spy film directed by Robert Tronson and starring Bernard Lee, William Sylvester and Margaret Tyzack. It was written by Peter Barnes and Frank Launder based on the real-life case of the Portland spy ring, whose activities prompted "Reds under the bed" scare stories in the British popular press in the early 1960s.
The Constant Husband is a 1955 British comedy film, directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Rex Harrison, Margaret Leighton, Kay Kendall, Cecil Parker, George Cole and Raymond Huntley. The story was written by Gilliat together with Val Valentine, and the film was produced by Individual Pictures, Gilliat's and Frank Launder's joint production company. Because the film got caught up in the 1954 bankruptcy of British Lion Film Corporation, it was not released until more than seven months after it had been finished and reviewed by the British Board of Film Censors.
Piccadilly Incident is a 1946 British drama film directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding, Coral Browne, Edward Rigby and Leslie Dwyer. It was written by Nicholas Phipps based on a story by Florence Tranter.
Uncle Silas is a 1947 British drama film directed by Charles Frank and starring Jean Simmons, Katina Paxinou and Derrick De Marney. It is an adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1864 novel Uncle Silas in which an heiress is pursued by her uncle, who craves her money following her father's death.
The Girl in the News is a 1940 British thriller film directed by Carol Reed and starring Margaret Lockwood, Barry K. Barnes and Emlyn Williams. It was based on the eponymous novel by Roy Vickers, released the same year.
Jack Edwards Livesey was a British film actor.