The Promoter

A movie that I think I briefly mentioned a couple of times in conjunction with planning to record it on my DVR is an early Alec Guinness movie from his native UK called The Card. IMDb and Wikipedia both say it was retitled The Promoter for its first American release, but the print TCM ran was titled The Card. The last time TCM ran it, I finally got the chance to record it, and recently watched it.

Alec Guinness plays Denry Machin, although as the movie opens we don't see Guinness because the opening scenes are with Denry as a child. Young Denry is an average at best student, but he's able to get access to the report cards to change his grade to something much better. This allows him to get accepted to the sort of school when where the scions of better families attend, although obviously not actual upper-class Britons since the movie is set at the turn of the last century when Britain's class structure was even more rigid than it is today. Poor Denry is the son of a washerwoman, and worse, one who seems happy with her lot in life and has no desire to have a life of luxury and convenience In any case, once Denry graduates from school, he gets a job working as a clerk for the solicitor Duncalf, which is where we first meet Guinness as the adult Denry.

On one of his first days at the job, the Countess of Chell (Valerie Hobson) comes in. She's engaged Duncalf for the job of sending out admissions to the big charity ball, something which is strictly by invitation only and something to which a man of Denry's station is never going to receive an invite. However, Duncalf has Denry fill in and address all the invitations, a job that should keep him up half the night. Denry ends up with several invitation blanks, and decides to use one to send himself an invitation. Since it's an invitation ball, he's going to need learn how to dance, and goes to the dance school run by Ruth Earp (Glynis Johns), albeit not successfully. However, the two begin to develop a romantic relationship.

Denry gets fired from his job with Duncalf for his stunt, but taking this sort of initiative gives him ideas, as he gets himself hired into one job after another that requires a person with the sort of go-getter attitude that I get the impression was decidedly frowned upon in the Britain of the era. Denry eventually becomes reasonably wealthy and offers some of his money to his mother, but she feels like it's somewhat ill-gotten, and besides, she couldn't stop working as that would be immoral. The relationship with Ruth begins to go a bit sour, but she's got a lady's companion in Nellie (Petula Clark), who also likes Denry, although she too isn't from the highest class of family.

The Card is yet another of those movies where you see the basic idea and the source material (it's based upon a novel from 1911 that I haven't read), and you can obviously understand why filmmakers would believe there's a good story here. However, something in the making of The Card doesn't go quite right. I think it's that the screenplay makes Alec Guinness' character out to be a bit too much of a grasper when the material really calls for lighter comedy. I'm not quite certain, however, how the screenplay could square that circle.

Still, all of the cast do a a professional job, and it's nice to see all the location shooting, even if it's all in black and white. The Card isn't a bad movie; it's just a bit of a shame that it's not quite up to the level of some of Guinness' other work from this era.