English novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton became an international name with two major film versions of his play "Gaslight", the first British version starring Anton Walbrook, the later American version starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. The story concerned the sadistic methodical psychological torture, hidden from public view, of a vulnerable innocent wife by her criminal husband. There was, needless to say, a particular extreme ruthlessness and viciousness about this man who has already murdered once. Similarly the central character, Ralph Gorse, in "The Charmer" - a ruthless and murderous when necessary, conman. The difference was that Gorse used his particular skill at a calculated fake easy charm to attract and lull his victims - then rob them of their life savings, their reputations, their everything. And murder them without remorse if needs must. In a way rather reminiscent of "Day of the Jackal" Gorse, like The Jackal, is utterly coldly calculating in his use of other humans as objects to serve his ends. Nigel Havers so perfectly plays Gorse the charismatic chilling charmer it is not clear if his career as an actor benefited from his raised profile or suffered as a result. Gorse is the text book psychopath (his enjoyment of strangling his victims as in this TV production though is not - murder for them is a means to an end, not an end in itself.) Hamilton's first novel "Craven House" was an endless collection of minute descriptions of the personalities particularly the foibles, pretences and weaknesses of the residents at a lodging house. The pettiness of people's weaknesses which Hamilton observed then is seen again in The Charmer - Mrs Cholmondley-Bruce (perfectly played by Rosemary Leach)seems to lead some to regard Hamilton as a blackly comic writer and his victims entanglement and distress as rather comic also. The point I think was that Hamilton's fictional victims were not heroic worthy people as they would be with other writers concerned to wring out more pathos - it was their vulnerabilities which Hamilton described and his villains detected and ruthlessly exploited. If a victim had been vain or foolish or stupidly trusting Hamilton did not expect to raise a smile. If Mrs Cholmondley-Bruce mocked the accent of her Irish house maid it was not Hamilton's intention that this made her death any less disturbing. Apart from his creative skill, it was Hamilton's clear-eyed honesty which lifted him above the writers of his time. Twenty two years after it was shot The Charmer remains fresh and absorbing for its whole 312 minutes, its lack of sentimentality puts in increasingly in tune with the times. The near faultless direction caught Gorse's (Havers') expressions as they instantly changed from false warm chummyness to eerie cold stare was faultless. The two leads were perfectly chosen, Rosemary Leach's natural warmth complementing an icy and eerie Nigel Havers. The period (1930s) atmosphere is perfectly caught. Although done with a light touch and entertaining, underneath it is rather like seeing a snake observe, size up - and eat - its fluffy and naive victim. Do we feel compassion or think that the victim's naivety and foolishness meant that they got more or less what they deserved? Gorse would have simply of thought, if he bothered to give it much thought, the latter.
Review of The Charmer
