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Triumph of the Rat
25 May 2008 11:12 amToday was the start of the British Film Institute's much-advertised 'Weekender'; my chief interest in it was that it offered a chance for me to take a guest to see The Rat, which I had enjoyed so much when it was shown as part of a special evening in 2004 and never expected to see on the big screen again.
We were promised all sorts of extravagant entertainments — live musicians synchronised with those on screen, burlesque dancers at appropriate moments — but in fact all that happened was that they put up the auditorium lights during the nightclub scene and people gradually noticed some ladies in shiny costumes appearing in the aisles and walking across in front of the screen. The second time, they didn't raise the lights (which was less distracting) but then you really couldn't see the dancers at all. It was a good idea but it didn't come off in performance; I suspect the practicalities hadn't all been thought through. A pity for the girls who were supposed to have been the highlight of the show...
But the film, although playing to a youthful audience who had been promised decadence and burlesque, survived the entire experience triumphantly. For the first few minutes the audience sniggered at just about everything shown on screen. Intertitles? — intrinisically hilarious. Ladies in 1920s fashions? — oh, so screamingly old-fashioned! But "The Rat" is a fast-moving piece of low-brow entertainment, designed to thrill, amuse, and hook 'em in... and within about five minutes, the audience had apparently stopped laughing at the film and started laughing with it... save for when they were waiting in breathtaken silence to find out what would happen next....
Response afterwards, in wondering tones: "But Ivor Novello could act!"
He can indeed act, and infinitely better here than in Hitchcock's notorious The Lodger. Novello's sense of mischief as the irrepressible Rat seems to be rather better developed than his attempts to appear sinister and darkly significant for Hitchcock, and his desperation and heartbreak at the end of this film are far more effective than his saintly crucifixion pose in the later production — possibly another case of the Novello curse, whereby he only seemed to be able to achieve stage success in scripts that he'd penned himself!
By the end of the film I was actually starting to wonder if I'd got completely the wrong end of the stick on my previous viewing, and interpreted a tragic ending as a happy one or vice versa — and I knew roughly what was going to happen. The tension was terrific, and a couple of scenes brought tears to my eyes again.
After the disappointment that followed taking a guest to see The Crimson Pirate (I didn't know anyone existed who wouldn't enjoy at least the acrobatics on display...) I was very much relieved that this piece of unashamed melodrama went down so well, from sweet little Odile to the swaggering Rat and beautiful, bored Zélie de Chaumet. It's a film with no pretensions to sophistication — shop-girl stuff — and tremendous fun.
We were promised all sorts of extravagant entertainments — live musicians synchronised with those on screen, burlesque dancers at appropriate moments — but in fact all that happened was that they put up the auditorium lights during the nightclub scene and people gradually noticed some ladies in shiny costumes appearing in the aisles and walking across in front of the screen. The second time, they didn't raise the lights (which was less distracting) but then you really couldn't see the dancers at all. It was a good idea but it didn't come off in performance; I suspect the practicalities hadn't all been thought through. A pity for the girls who were supposed to have been the highlight of the show...
But the film, although playing to a youthful audience who had been promised decadence and burlesque, survived the entire experience triumphantly. For the first few minutes the audience sniggered at just about everything shown on screen. Intertitles? — intrinisically hilarious. Ladies in 1920s fashions? — oh, so screamingly old-fashioned! But "The Rat" is a fast-moving piece of low-brow entertainment, designed to thrill, amuse, and hook 'em in... and within about five minutes, the audience had apparently stopped laughing at the film and started laughing with it... save for when they were waiting in breathtaken silence to find out what would happen next....
Response afterwards, in wondering tones: "But Ivor Novello could act!"
He can indeed act, and infinitely better here than in Hitchcock's notorious The Lodger. Novello's sense of mischief as the irrepressible Rat seems to be rather better developed than his attempts to appear sinister and darkly significant for Hitchcock, and his desperation and heartbreak at the end of this film are far more effective than his saintly crucifixion pose in the later production — possibly another case of the Novello curse, whereby he only seemed to be able to achieve stage success in scripts that he'd penned himself!
By the end of the film I was actually starting to wonder if I'd got completely the wrong end of the stick on my previous viewing, and interpreted a tragic ending as a happy one or vice versa — and I knew roughly what was going to happen. The tension was terrific, and a couple of scenes brought tears to my eyes again.
After the disappointment that followed taking a guest to see The Crimson Pirate (I didn't know anyone existed who wouldn't enjoy at least the acrobatics on display...) I was very much relieved that this piece of unashamed melodrama went down so well, from sweet little Odile to the swaggering Rat and beautiful, bored Zélie de Chaumet. It's a film with no pretensions to sophistication — shop-girl stuff — and tremendous fun.
