Libel (1959)

I'll tell you why so serious

Fresh and Exciting

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This Anthony Asquith directed movie is one of Dirk Bogarde's finest movies. I would rank up there with Bogarde's performance in Victim (1961). Here, he plays the double role of portraying Sir Mark Loddon and his POW look-alike, Frank Welney. As the movie begins, one of his fellow POWs, Jeffrey Buckernham (Paul Massie) sees Loddon on TV giving a tour of his plush country estate with his American wife, Lady Loddon (Olivia de Havilland). Convinced that Loddon is Welney, Buckenham arranges to have a newspaper call him out which, in turn, forces Loddon to sue the newspaper for libel. However, he, himself, is not totally convinced about his own identity in that there are certain blank spots in his memory resulting from his escape from the POW camp many years previously. This is one of those great courtroom dramas in which the two opposing attorneys--Sir Wilfred (Robert Morley) represents Loddon and Wilfrid Hyde-White (Hubert Foxley) represents the defense for the newspaper in for Loddon's libel suit. Loddon's low point of the trial occurs when his own wife takes the stand, believing that he is not her husband.

In London, veteran pilot Paul Massie (as Jeffrey "Jeff" Buckenham) sees a former World War II buddy on television. The show's reporter is interviewing handsome British aristocrat Dirk Bogarde (as Mark Sebastian Loddon) and his American wife Olivia de Havilland (as Margaret "Maggie" Loddon) about Mr. Bogarde's notable family estate. Bogarde has trouble remembering events from prior to his years as a prisoner of war in Germany. The experience made his memory unreliable and his hair turn grey, according to Bogarde. After watching the broadcast, Mr. Massie declares Bogarde an impostor..."Libel" ends up being a little confusing, even though the identity problems in the plot are cleared up satisfactorily. For most of the running tome, the story favors one conclusion, making it seem less like a mystery; Bogarde does an excellent job, considering. Distracting, but important in the script, is his "grey" hair color. He looks more like a younger, blond man while his co-star's dated hairstyle makes Ms. De Havilland look like the older woman. Their age difference, five years, wasn't that big. As dueling lawyers, Robert Morley and Wilfrid Hyde-White ensure the courtroom scenes play engagingly.******* Libel (10/23/59) Anthony Asquith ~ Dirk Bogarde, Olivia de Havilland, Paul Massie, Robert Morley

This is pretty good. I didn't know until the last few minutes whether Dirk Bogarde was the Fifth Earl Baronet of Chichester-on-Rhymes and Aylesworth House -- or whatever his title and estate were called -- or a lower-echelon con man who had taken his place.Everything is hunky dory for the wealthy English aristocrat who lives happily with his wife, Olivia De Havilland,in his mansion. He's handsome, loving, and friendly, but he suffers from an uncertain memory due to unpleasant war experiences. He's an ex POW who spent a lot of time as an army major in a German prison camp; his companions were the low-brow actor, also played by Bogarde, who resembled him and was good at impersonations, and the Canadian Buckinham, who disapproves of the actor and his pretensions.Years after the war, Buckinham shows up and accuses Bogarde of being NOT the Fourth Earl of Muckle-on-Yare and the Abbey Grange, but of being the ambitious actor instead. The actor presumably murdered the Duke during an escape and took his place, imitating him peerlessly, or rather peerfully.Shanda! Bogarde takes the tabloid paper that printed the accusation to court and sues for libel. We're all rooting for the justification of the Viscount Greystoke because he seems like such a nice guy, but as the trial progresses more and more doubt is cast on his real identity and evidence emerges that suggests he did in fact murder the aristocratic Bogarde, First Baronet of Cumberbatch-on-Treacle, and took his place. Even his loving wife is convinced. Bogarde doesn't help. In the witness box he loses his poise, begins to stutter and sweat, and generally radiates an aura of deceit.I'll leave it at that. The direction is competent, no more than that, but Bogarde is quite good, and De Havilland is as elegant as ever, British in style if not nationality. She came from the family that developed the famous De Havilland Mosquito during the war but was raised on the San Francisco peninsula. She attended the tiny Notre Dame High School in Saratoga, which has (or had until recently) a charming walled-in campus full of tall evergreens.The movie doesn't exactly rush headlong through the narrative -- which is, I understand, taken from an old incident in France. It's not, say, "Witness for the Prosecution." It's less inventive, though hardly more believable. In all, worth catching. Nobody breaks down on the witness stand and cries out, "I DID IT. I DID IT! But I didn't want to kill him; I only wanted to FRIGHTEN him! (Sob.)"

I unabashedly admit that Dirk Bogarde is one of my favorite actors, so naturally, two of him is better. In "Libel," directed by Anthony Asquith, he has a dual role - that of a baron, Sir Mark Sebastian Loddon, and Frank Welney, an actor and a lookalike in his barracks during World War II. When Mark returns from the war, he can't remember a lot of his past life and is haunted by images of events during the war that he can't connect with. Another soldier sees the baron on television and believes that he is really Frank Welney, and the story is published in a tabloid. Mark's wife (Olivia de Havilland) insists that for the sake of their young son, he sue for libel. He does.This is an often-told story, but I enjoyed it anyway. Bogarde is excellent as the uptight, insecure Mark and the cocky, nosy Frank, and while there is a strong resemblance between the two men, Welney's coloring and hairstyle is different, as is his manner. De Havilland turns in another marvelous, emotional performance as a woman who starts out believing her husband is indeed the man she loved before the war... and then having her doubts.Well directed and holds one's interest.