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I just love the characterizations in movies about the British ruling class in Africa and
India. You have to understand that I don't know how these people
actually lived, but I've seen a number of movies which portray them
consistently as vainglorious, greedy, shallow, condescending, and
racist twits with no respect for the native cultures of their
colonies.
"The diamond is cursed, Sahib/Bwana,
if you remove it from the eye of Shiva/n'botu, we all die ... !"
"I say, Jeeves, bring me another gin
and quinine, and do shoot that frightful beggar, if you would."
This film has all the classic elements. While the
people of Africa starved and the people back in England faced German
rockets and fought the Battle of Britain, the British expats in
Kenya worried about where to get a good drink, who had the best
centerpieces at last month's round of parties, whose wife had the
most elegant pearls, and who was sleeping with whom.
The frivolity of the expat colony was interrupted by the murder
of one of their own. A middle aged man, Lord Broughton, brought a
carefree, gold-digging young bride to the colony, and the gorgeous
young Lady Broughton took about an hour to find a studly young lover
with a fancy title (the Earl of Erroll). The old husband seemed to
accept her inevitable desire to dissolve their marriage, and the old
coot even toasted the young lovers with a celebratory dinner ...
... after which the young Earl was found pushing up the daisies in the
front seat of his car, shot to death.
These events are based on a true story, and the names have not
been changed for the film. In both the film and in reality, the old husband was charged with the
murder, but acquitted. The crime remains officially unsolved. The
screenplay and the eponymous book both assume Lord Broughton was
guilty, and the film reinforces that conclusion with a rather bizarrely
incriminating
finale.
Not everyone finds that a reasonable conclusion.
Here is an historical account of the trial by a lawyer involved
peripherally. (He was almost chosen to be the defense counsel).
Although another member of the colony, Lady Carberry, claimed to the
author of White Mischief that Lord Broughton confessed his guilt to
her personally, the author of the historical article linked above
poo-poos this revelation. In fact, he says that the government's
accusations against the husband were ludicrous, presuming the old
boy to have shimmied up and down a drainpipe and to have hiked five
miles on foot in order to commit the crime. Furthermore, the
prosecutors tried to prove that Lord Broughton's Colt was the murder
weapon, a contention that was utterly destroyed by the defense in
the trial. The murder weapon was later shown to have been a five
groove gun which was never linked to Lord Broughton or any other
member of the colony. The lawyer/observer speculates that the crime
probably had to have been committed by one or more of the dozens of
female lovers of the Earl of Erroll, very possibly by Lady Broughton
herself.
Whatever the true story may be, the case continues to fascinate
new generations of Englishmen because it exposed the decadent
excesses of people who were living a shallow life of luxury while their
countrymen endured the hardships of WW2.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I find
that scripted versions of gripping real-life crimes and trials
rarely make for interesting films. If the author stays too close to real-life
court procedure, the film gets tedious. If the author strays into
symbolism and speculation (ala Nick Roeg's Eureka), he tends to
substitute lunatic imaginings for those elements that made the crime
interesting in the first place. The aforementioned Eureka, however,
for all of its mad faults, is a far more
interesting interpretation of a sensational crime than White
Mischief, which just slogs along. The Earl's murder must
obviously have been a crime of passion, but I had a hard time
imagining any of these characters being passionate about anything.
Even their sexual couplings were perfunctory, as if they were
performing obligatory social rituals, like dancing with one's cousin
at a family wedding. The director of the
film is Il Postino's Michael Radford, and nobody will ever accuse
this guy of getting into a rut. He has only worked on a handful of major projects over the past two decades, and his five
major films have virtually nothing in common. |
