The Man in Grey

“Who dishonors us dies.” In the mid-1940’s, British studio Gainsborough Pictures became famously associated with a string of wildly successful period melodramas, some of which have been liberally categorized as noir adjacent. While this classification is a stretch, of the ten total pictures in this series, the first, Leslie Arliss’s The Man in Grey, may come the closest: it combines the studio’s emphasis on lush visuals and emotional heights with murder, revenge, and a sociopathic femme fatale — played by superstar Margaret Lockwood — who will do anything to escape her humble beginnings. Like so many noirs, the film is framed as an extended flashback as two descendants of the story’s main characters make each other’s acquaintance at an estate auction. The flashback begins at a girl’s boarding school, where the kindhearted Clarissa (Phyllis Calvert) and Lockwood’s Hesther, an embittered junior teacher, forge a lifelong, one-sided friendship through which Hesther will gain access to money and men through Clarissa’s social status. James Mason plays Lord Rohan, the husband who respects Clarissa even if he doesn’t love her (“Tell me, are all husbands and wives like us?”), and Stewart Granger plays stage actor Rokeby who does indeed love her. For her part, Hesther and her poisonous behavior will vindicate the fortune teller who years earlier warned Clarissa to “never make no friends of women.” The final act comes alive with Gothic atmosphere, the lights and sounds of thunderstorms and fireplaces magnifying Hesther’s mental entrapment.