Outcast of the Islands

Carol Reed was acclaimed as an important new talent when Graham Greene, as film critic of the Spectator , reviewed his second film as a director, Midshipman Easy , in 1935. After the second world war they found fame, collaborating on The Fallen Idol and The Third Man . Reed thought they might scale new heights with a film of Joseph Conrad's 1896 novel An Outcast of the Islands . But Greene, in thrall since childhood to Conrad, had been trying to escape the Polish writer's influence and rejected Reed's invitation. A pity, because it might have been a revealing masterpiece. Instead, it's an ambitious, deeply flawed picture, filmed on unromantically observed south- east Asian locations with a powerful performance by Trevor Howard as the self-destructive Willems and Ralph Richardson (a key exponent of Greene) providing a highly stylised portrait of the godlike Captain Lingard. A crucial film in an important, currently undervalued oeuvre, with striking supporting turns by Robert Morley and Wendy Hiller.