Wobbling, Robert Rossen’s vaguely liberal adaptation of Alec Waugh’s popular novel is a mix of adultery, murder, miscegenation and local politics on a fictitious West Indies island, a former French, now British colony. It gets into all kinds of lives except those of any of the impoverished, teeming black lives of slave descendants. Two light-skinned blacks are among the major characters, one of them a union organizer and political aspirant. Lots of veddy British whites are veddy decent, you know.
For such dubious material (including clichéd shots of natives at work in the cane fields), this is a moderately interesting and surprisingly entertaining film, richly launched by Harry Belafonte’s heavenly singing of the title tune. Belafonte also plays David Boyeur, the one attempting to lead the island’s blacks and pursue their interests. Far better and in fact vivid performances come from James Mason, Joan Fontaine and especially Diana Wynward. The film deftly zigzags amongst different characters and plotlines, although the whole thing eventually peters out.
The most interesting aspect involves Maxwell Fleury’s certainty of his wife’s adultery, which leads to his killing the wrongly suspected rival. A verbal slip alerts the investigating officer of Fleury’s guilt, but now Colonel Whittingham has to manipulate Fleury to confess to overturn a lack of evidence. Fleury’s guiltiness, especially after discovering his victim’s innocence, has him resorting to cliché by smashing the bathroom mirror. Whittingham has not only played Porfiri to Fleury’s Raskolnikov but has talked about the book with him and given him a copy; but Fleury won’t read it because Raskolnikov wasn’t married, so what could be the parallel? Crime and Punishment proves irrelevant as Fleury confesses after traveling a private psychological road. Whittingham ends up looking perfectly foolish with his calculated, condescending literary approach.
Tags: Joan Fontaine
