Downfall (1964)

Downfall is a 1964 British crime potboiler, one of the Merton Park Edgar Wallace films. It was directed by John Llewellyn Moxey from a script by Robert Banks Stewart.

Driving instructor Martin Somers (T.P. McKenna) has just been cleared of a murder charge, largely due to the brilliance of barrister Sir Harold Crossley (Maurice Denham). His acquittal might also have partly due to the fact that Somers is very much a ladies’ man and that women (including women jurors) seem to find him irresistible.

The inspector in charge of the case (Inspector Royd) and the psychiatrist called by the prosecution are horrified. They are convinced that Somers is a homicidal maniac. Somers had been accused of murdering a woman and they fear he will kill again.

Sir Harold has woman troubles. He has a wife named Suzanne. A young, glamorous, sexy wife who is not at all faithful to him and no longer bothers to hide her love affairs. There’s nothing Sir Harold can do. He can’t divorce her. Not only would it be a scandal that would damage his career, it would be humiliating. People would say that he’d been a fool to marry her. The situation is intolerable but he’s trapped.

But perhaps there is a way out.

Sir Harold decides to employ a chauffeur/valet and he decides that Martin Somers would be ideal for the job. Apart from chauffeuring Sir Harold Somers could also drive Lady Crossley around (she doesn’t have a driver’s licence).

Sir Harold thinks that putting his young wife, with her voracious appetite for men, together with the womanising Somers could produce interesting results that might be to his advantage.

It’s not difficult to deduce that Sir Harold is up to something devilish but the nice thing about this movie is that it’s not so easy to anticipate exactly what the results will be. Especially given that we have no idea whether Somers really did commit that murder or not. There’s going to be a game involving three players but only one of them knows exactly what the game is and there’s no certainty that he can control the game once he’s set it in motion.

There’s also a subplot involving Sir Harold’s attractive female junior counsel and that subplot will eventually connect to the main plot in a rather neat way.

This is a good example of a movie that takes a setup that has nothing dazzlingly original about but still manages to keep us guessing as to exactly how it will play out. We expect plot twists at the end but there are several ways the story could be resolved and we can’t predict which way it will go. It also very effectively keeps us guessing about Somers right till the end. Sometimes he behaves in a way that makes us think he’s a killer and sometimes he behaves exactly the way an ordinary innocent man would behave.

This movie benefits from fine performances by the three leads. Maurice Denham plays Sir Harold as a wily old fox who expects to win in the courtroom, and expects to win everywhere else as well. A barrister has to be a little flexible in his moral principles and that’s certainly true of Sir Harold.

T.P. McKenna is as magnetic as always and gives a superbly ambiguous performance.

Yugoslav-born Nadja Regin oozes glamour and sex as Suzanne Crossley.

With B-movies rapidly becoming a thing of the past in the early 60s director John Llewellyn Moxey and writer Robert Banks Stewart both made the inevitable move into television where they enjoyed considerable success.

Downfall is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Mysteries volume 6 boxed set. The anamorphic transfer is excellent (like all the Merton Park Edgar Wallace films it’s in black-and-white and widescreen).

Downfall is a thoroughly enjoyable little low-key mystery thriller that works very neatly indeed. Definitely highly recommended.