Mine Own Executioner

source: Mine Own Executioner

All rather refreshing for me. The subject has been done before of course, but I can't recall it being too often and not with as much class as this, at least in the UK, at that time. I can't really add to the reviews on the plot and subject matter, only that I thought Burgess Meredith played his part very well in this, and gave us a complex character with his own questions. A shout for the other actors as well, who all put in strong performances with their characterisations too, regardless of the amount of screen time. There is even an uncredited appearance of Michael Horden in this, and I also had sympathy for the kid who briefly opens and closes the film really, with his two contrasting appearances. The general look of this B/W film and feel of the film is also very good, with a well written script all combining to give this film an entertaining atmosphere about it. I particular liked the scene where there's some subtle frisson going on in the room, and there is the most minimal of eye movement happening between the actors, bar one, that say it all. About two thirds of the way through, I thought where is it all going, as it didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular, then I thought, so what, I'm enjoying the ride. It was a good ride too, as the strands came together and the pace picked up, with a well done tension highlight (Hitchcockian, some say, and I agree) in a rescue scene. Surprised to see that Director, Anthony Kimmin's previous films included quite a few George Formby films filmed prior to the war. This was his first after the war, and bears no relation whatsoever to the Formby films. If you have the time, and enjoy old B/W movies, this very well may be for you.

***SPOILER ALERT*** A bit talky and at times confusing the film "Mine Own Executioner" is still way ahead of its time,when it was made in 1947, about the complexities of the human mind and how to go about, if at all possible, curing them. Psychoanalyst Felix Milne, Burgess Meredith, resents being called doctor in that he's not qualified, by not having a medical degree, in being one. It's for that very reason that Mrs. Molly Lucian, Barbara White, contacts him in order to help her very unstable husband Adam, Kieron Moore, who from previous experiences hates doctors with a passion. Told by Molly that Adam had attempted to strangle her Felix has Adam visit him at his office to see what he can do for him. It's when Felix sees the very weird looking Adam, who also turned out to be a kleptomaniac, outside his house he realizes that his problems, besides being somewhat homicidal, are far greater then he ever imagined! Having been captured by the Japenses during the war Adam was brutally tortured by them in a Japanese, in Burma, prison camp. Making his escape from his Japaneses captors Adam ended up killing one of them, a prison guard, by cracking his skull open with a bamboo pole. It's when Adam saw his wife in their darkened apartment that he mistook her for his Japanese captors and thus tried to murder her! As Felix tried to cure his patient's severe mental problems he's also having an affair with family friend Barbara Edge,Christine Norden, behind his wife Pat's, Dulcie Gray, back. This leads him to neglect Adam which in the end leads to disastrous results for everyone, including his wife Moll, involved with him. Far better then most movies made about the subject, psychology and mental illness, at that time without the usual quick fix in neatly solving things by the time the film is finally over. ****SPOILERS*** Felix Milne did what he could to help his troubled patient but in the end the problems that Adam had were far too great, and complicated, for him or medical science to handle. The fact that Felix failed despite his best efforts to help Adam Lucian shows how honest the movie-"Mine Own Executioner"-was. Psychology-like Felix kept saying in the movie- is not an exact science but far from it. It was that realization on Felix's part that had him change his mind, when he wanted to quit his practice, when he was confronted with another patient of his, who was being abused by his father for actions he had no control of, who desperately needed Felix's help: The sad and frightened little Charlie Oakes, Malcolm Dalmayne.

MINE OWN EXECUTIONER is a psychological thriller released in Britain in 1947. Watching it today, it feels a lot like an early precursor to the wave of 'Vietnam vet' films that were being made in the 1970s. This one features a youthful Burgess Meredith playing a psychiatrist treating a disturbed war veteran and uses the narrative to explore the social milieu of the era. The film is very well photographed by the reliably great Freddie Francis and features an engaging supporting cast including Kieron Moore, John Laurie, and Christine Norden. It feels a little slow and staged at times, but it does build to a suitably dramatic climax.

An old lady has died and left her estate to a foundation that now runs it as a free psychiatric clinic. You ought to see the place. Square footage galore, marble floors, modern furniture for everyone, a circular wooden staircase, the original of Van Gogh's "Blue Irises" on the wall. (Well, not that last, but it's a classy place.) Burgess Meredith, as one of the psychotherapists who does pro bono work at the clinic when not listening to rich old ladies in his own practice, gives one of his finest performances. We meet a few of his patients. One is an ex RAF pilot, Kieran Moore, who has grown sullen over the past two months and finally tried to choke his pretty young wife. He doesn't seem to remember the incident, or is unwilling to talk about it during his first five minutes of conversation with Meredith. When he leaves, Meredith records his diagnosis in his notebook: "Schizophrenia. Split Personality." I'm a shrink and that's all wrong, but this is a drama not a documentary on psychiatric diagnosis. Meredith is full of insight. Happy most of the time yet he realizes that he snaps at his loving wife an bullies her. And he's also treating a mutual friend, a cute married blond, with some sort of unresolved "sex problems." Meredith is attracted to his new patient but acts within the bounds of middle-class propriety. The focus of the film is not Meredith's relationship with the flirtatious blond, though. It has to do with his attempts to try working through the repressed memories of Kieron Moore's terrible experiences as a Japanese POW. It's an intelligently written and responsible film, not an uplifting soap opera. There is tension and tragedy. Recommended, for adults, anyway.

This is a highly delicate psychological drama of a case of schizophrenia which proves too difficult to handle correctly. It is typical of such cases that they are completely unpredictable and can appear as jovial and harmonious as any perfectly healthy person when suddenly something else takes over which is too terrible for words. The director himself had a war background from both world wars and knew what he was directing as he visualized war traumas on film. The war scenes here are just a short parenthesis in the middle of the film and are passed by never to return, but they provide the essential key to the film and its horrible account of a traumatized war victim who never can get rid of his past. The dialogue is splendid and extremely sustained all the way through, and the three ladies also play an important part. Above all, it is Burgess Meredith's film who makes a perfectly convincing realization of a psychiatrist's difficulties when he is faced with an extreme case. As a psychological war drama, it is of the very highest rank and the higher, for showing the war as little as possible.

This is a highly superior film in every way, based on a novel and screenplay by the novelist and screenwriter Nigel Balchin. (He wrote the screenplays for Sandy Mackendrick's magnificent film MANDY, 1952; for THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS, 1956, see my review; and for 23 PACES TO BAKER STREET, 1956, see my review.) It was certainly a high point in the directorial career of Anthony Kimmins, who is largely forgotten today but here shows a positive genius and a Hitchcockian touch with the film's most exciting scene. The story concerns a conscientious and talented British psychiatrist who lacks a medical degree, but whose success with patients exceeds that of most of his colleagues. The professional tensions to which this gives rise are excellently portrayed. The psychiatrist is sensitively played by Burgess Meredith, who is perfect for such a part. His own demons haunt him, and his difficult relationship with his wife forms the backdrop to the main story, constituting a fine counterpoint which does not appear artificial, as could easily have been the case in less skillful hands. One day a charming young woman with a shining smile and expectant eyes comes to see him and begs him to treat her husband, overcoming his hesitancy to take on such a case. She says he recently tried to strangle her to death. Barbara White plays this young wife. She has an excellent screen presence, and it is a pity that she only appeared in six feature films and three TV roles. She only really worked in the film business fox six years. Her husband in real life was the actor who plays her husband in this film, the Irish actor Kieron Moore (born Kieron O'Hanrahan). They married in 1947, the year this film came out, having met and worked together the previous year in the film THE VOICE WITHIN (1946), a forgotten and apparently lost film of which no reviews are recorded. Moore is truly sensational in this part, playing a former airman who was shot down in Burma, imprisoned by the Japanese, and has become a split personality case. His performance is mesmerically convincing. The flash back scene of him being shot down is very realistic and unnerving, with the antiaircraft shells exploding all around him. The most amazing scene in the film involves someone climbing up a multi-storey fire ladder, and even Hitchcock could not have squeezed more nervous tension out of it than we see here. The drama of this film is multi-layered, intense, and highly-textured. We really do not know what is going to happen, as the tale becomes increasingly complex and worrying. Burgess Meredith's devoted, slightly hopeless, and long-suffering wife is played with great dignity and sensitivity by Dulcie Gray. Christine Norden plays an alluring vamp, wife of a friend, with whom Burgess Meredith has developed a guilty obsession. This was only her second film, as she only entered the film business in this year, 1947 and left it in 1951. In 1949 she appeared with Kieron Moore again in SAINT AND SINNERS, a film set in an Irish village and only recently resurrected on DVD, which I have not seen yet. (Slowly but surely the old British films are re-emerging after decades in the vaults.) The treatment of the profession of psychiatry in this film is remarkably profound, and avoids falling into the sensational superficiality found in most attempts to portray it in the cinema. At the time this film was made, an extreme case of shell shock resulting in a psychopathic condition was a highly topical subject, as there were many such difficult cases then in all the countries which had just recently emerged from the War. One could even say that in its own way, this film semi-qualifies for being a film noir, as it is steeped in the gloom of guilt and doubt of that time. And as with all films made in London back then, the streets are almost empty of traffic. Alas, alack, if only! This story by Nigel Balchin was subsequently filmed for British television in 1959, and as a Dutch TV movie in 1960.

It comes as a surprise watching this to discover that psychiatry, in this country, was in such a state of infancy. Although it was about to be introduced into the NHS, in the early post-war years the insane asylums, where anyone who didn't fit the norm, tended to be tossed still prevailed. The mental effects of warfare were a factor in alerting the authorities to cause and effect more clearly than early childhood incidents, which parents tended to do their best to conceal. So, here we have a film of vital social interest, so intriguing and indeed stunning a 1947 audience that the film receive many plaudits and became the official British entry at Cannes. Burgess Meredith puts in a fine and convincing performance and the entire film is presented in such a way as to titillate, excite and inform with the added bonus of a scary suspense element and killings.

Interesting a previous reviewer said it might be the first film to feature psycho therapy. When I was invalided out of the army through Northfiuelds Hospital not long after the war my psychiatrist recommended I should read the book. Don't think I did. I worked in the Pinewood Story Department later and met Nigel Balchin. He had been in the army but had done better than me - rising to Brigadier General I think. Booze got him alas. In this or one of his other books he used the words 'Boffin' for scientist and 'back room boys' - words that have gone into the language.

The first film to explore the use of lay practitioners in the Freudian theory, this film is so far ahead of its time as to be psychologically shocking. American Burgess Meredith's performance is one of the best of his career. The absolute certainty with which he portrays the uncertainty of the human psyche (his own as well as others') is the film's brilliance. Torn with personal ambivalence, Felix is also torn with the knowledge that he is unable to save his worthwhile patient and his loving wife. A truly under-acknowledged and underestimated film, it deserves a viewing by all interested in film art, and in the development of psychoanalytic technique.