Robert Hamer (1949)
This unusual crime story was released the same year as Kind Hearts and Coronets, Robert Hamer’s most celebrated (though I don’t think his best) film. In The Spider and the Fly, working with an original screenplay by Robert Westerby, Hamer is repeatedly impatient to change direction into a kind of picture different from the one you thought you were watching. Can’t he keep his mind on the job or is this a deliberate tactic to throw the audience? For much of the time, I thought the former. By the end of the film, I’d changed my mind.
Well-born Philippe Ledocq (Guy Rolfe) is a master thief and cracksman. Fernand Maubert (Eric Portman) is the Paris chief of police. Maubert is sure Ledocq’s responsible for a series of recent bank robberies but the suave criminal always has an alibi – the latest theft sees his accomplice, Madeleine Sancaize (Nadia Gray), with whom he’s in some degree of romantic relationship, take the rap. Madeleine is not in prison for long before Maubert decides to release her. In doing so, he warns her not to see Ledocq again; at the same time, the police chief is developing his own romantic attachment to Madeleine. Maubert’s idea of detective work is strikingly intellectual. He and Ledocq like each other personally and have several sociable, civilised conversations that don’t bring the wrongdoer any closer to justice. George Cole, in the small role of Maubert’s by-the-book assistant, is amusingly puzzled by his boss’s melancholy, reflective attitude to nailing criminals. In the course of its first half-hour or so, The Spider and the Fly gets you interested in the characters – especially the thoughtful, lonely Maubert (Eric Portman captures both qualities very well) – but it seems increasingly inert as a crime thriller.
Then Maubert gets a tip-off that Ledocq is carrying out a robbery. This prompts an exciting action sequence as Ledocq and his accomplice Jean Louis (John Carol) attempt to make their escape, from the top of the bank building. This was one of the first films on which Geoffrey Unsworth was credited as cinematographer (another interesting mystery story, The Clouded Yellow (1950), was another); and Seth Holt was the editor. Their combined efforts make the rooftop getaway almost unbearably tense. The thieves are nicely contrasted, too. Both are scared; while Jean’s a trembling wreck, Ledocq betrays his fear silently, in his facial muscles and the few, discreet drops of sweat that form on his brow. He escapes to Madeleine’s apartment and asks her to give him an alibi, which she does. The detective is frustrated again but not for long. Although Jean Louis doesn’t survive the evening, his presumably twin brother Arthur (he’s played by the same actor anyway), who is Ledocq’s accomplice on his next job, is persuaded by Maubert to shop the gentleman thief. Ledocq is arrested and convicted. The Spider and the Fly began in 1913 and the significance of the exact year now becomes clear. Ledocq’s five-year jail sentence starts just as World War I gets underway.
The narrative jumps forward to 1916, when Maubert has a senior role in French counterintelligence and the war minister (Edward Chapman) charges him to get hold of a list of German spies in France, which the French government knows to be hidden in a safe in the German embassy in neutral Switzerland. Maubert has the ideal candidate for the job. With the minister’s permission, Maubert offers Ledocq the assignment, along with immediate release, a pardon for his crimes and the possibility of seeing Madeleine again. Ledocq also asks to be formally decorated on successful completion of his commission. The request is granted, he and Maubert travel to Bern, and – in another gripping episode – the secret documents are successfully obtained. Just as you wondered earlier where the thriller element had disappeared to, now Madeleine seems to have faded from the scene, only to make a stunning return. When the newly decorated Ledocq arrives at her flat, Maubert is already there. He’s looking deeply unhappy – not because he thinks that Ledocq, as well as finding that crime pays, is going to get the girl but because the list of German spies turns out to include the name of Madeleine Sancaize. She now exits the film, arrested for treason. The closing scene takes place on a railway station. Maubert happens to be there, accompanied by the war minister’s aide (Maurice Denham). The latter is sure he recognises Ledocq as one of a crowd of soldiers departing on a train to fight at Verdun. Maubert says the aide is wrong but knows he’s right and locks eyes briefly with Ledocq, who is about to die for his country. The irony, of course, is that, if he’d had stayed in prison for his full term, Ledocq would have survived the Great War. Hamer doesn’t overstress this, making the irony all the more potent.
The French setting of the story is satisfying in two ways. First, much of the location shooting for The Spider and the Fly actually took place in Paris. Second, Hamer and his cast commendably resist cod Frenchifying of their characters. Eric Portman and impressive Guy Rolfe (whom I don’t remember seeing before, though I guess I must have) convince you they’re French even though they sound straightforwardly English. The only thoroughly exotic presence is Madeleine; since Nadia Gray, giving her character an apt blend of obduracy and charm, emigrated from her native Romania when in her mid-twenties, this is perfectly natural. Another good early scene takes place in a bar, where Maubert watches Belfort (Harold Lang), a recently released convict, immediately revert to his former trade as a pickpocket; Maubert watches Belfort rob a man before instructing him to return the man’s wallet, which he does. Belfort, owing Maubert a favour, will come in handy later as an informant.
21 January 2025
