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• Language: English
• Region: Region 4 (Read more about DVD formats.)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B0017GF91G
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #278,312 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

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5.0 out of 5 stars This 1952 movie stars Dirk Bogarde (Chris) and a little boy named--, November 1, 2008

By 

Julie M. Vognar "Julie" (Berkeley, California United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Stranger In-Between (AKA The Hunted) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Jon Whiteley (who later won a British Oscar for "The Kidnappers.") "The best of my windbreaker running movies," as Bogarde called it, the action is simple, the black and white cinemetography excellent, and the acting as well.

Bogarde plays a man whom we (and the little, tow-headed boy) discover in a cellar, standing over the body of a man he has just killed. The dead man, as we find out, was his wife's lover ("why do you think I married a sailor to begin with?" she asks him when he confronts her in their one scene together). The boy drops his teddy bear, and Bogarde grabs him--gently--and they start...running. As it turns out, and as Chris (Bogarde) knows right away, somehow, the little boy doesn't want to be found--either. He's being lashed by his adoptive parents--who look like such nice, middle-class English people.

They become friends, the two.

But Bogarde's legs are long, and Whiteley's are short, and eventually, Bogarde has to choose between the boy's mental and physical health and his own questionable safety (even after he steals a boat, and is headed for a far shore).

The most famous scene is one in which Bogarde tries to ditch the boy (a tall dark presumptive killer travelling on foot with a small blond boy make a pretty conspicuous target for the police). The man runs over bomb craters ("always in demand as scenery in those days, and always plentiful"), across fields, to a railroad bridge ("go away! I don't want you anymore!")--and jumps into a freight car in a train passing under the bridge. He sees the boy is going to follow him, jump and all, and screams at him to go back, not to jump, but the boy, imitating Bogarde's jumping stance on the bridge--jumps anyway. Neither is hurt, and Chris gathers the little boy in his arms and says, "I know. That was a dreadful thing to do."

The best scene, though (except possibly for the last), is when the two of them are lying on a bed in the only indoors night they spend, in a baordinghouse, before the police have determined who they are, and that they're travelling together, and Chris tells the little boy a story about a monster who ate lambs and such, but then waded out to sea, in search of whales, tied to the land (the monster can't swim). Monster forgets the ties, as he wades deeper and deeper, "and that's how England came to be made." The story evolves into one of his own marriage (told in such a way as not to alarm the boy), and--the camera is constantly on Bogarde's face-- tears well up in his eyes. The boy is crying too.

You know--no, of course you don't--how exciting it is to own a great baseball player's rookie card? You see all the things in that young face and body that you know he will do--later on. This is Bogarde's rookie card. (the first movie in which he had star billing.)

It's much too expensive, because it's never been re-issued, but if you have the change in your pocket, or feel the need of a lot of Bogarde films (gosh--I seem to have developed 5!)--then go for it.