Summer Under the Stars 2011 -- Day Four Review: Raffles

Raffles is an old movie. That may seem obvious, considering that most of the movies I’m watching for Summer Under the Stars were released prior to 1960, but when I say “old movie,” I don’t necessarily mean it in the way I think many people who use that phrase mean it. Casablanca is an old movie, but then again so is Jaws; what makes them different isn’t so much that the former is older than the latter, but rather that, when we look at Casablanca today, we see less of ourselves in it. Maybe the characters in Jaws have dated hairstyles, and maybe we can see the hinges in the shark’s mouth when it finally tries to attack the boat, but those are minor quibbles when compared to the differences we see when we look at a movie about star-crossed lovers during the Second World War. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman don’t just dress differently; they speak differently; they relate differently; they live differently, and under vastly different circumstances, than do most people today. The war movies of the forties, just like the gangster movies of the thirties or the domestic dramas of the fifties, are always readily identifiable as “old movies” because they show a specific time – and often place -- in American history. Watching them is almost like catching a glimpse into another world.

Such is the case with Raffles. Released in 1930 and based on a series of books by E.W. Hornung, it follows the adventures of A.J. Raffles (Ronald Colman), a wealthy Londoner who carries off a series of burglaries under the name “The Amateur Cracksman.” The acting is good; the story is fairly thin, and the conclusion, like the conclusions of many films from the thirties, is rather abrupt; but the real worth of Raffles is the way it acts as an insulated snapshot of a specific era in early twentieth century England. The world we’re allowed to glimpse in Raffles is a world already well on its way to death, the world of the British aristocracy, the world of butlers and chambermaids, of ladies and gentlemen and grand country houses, vestiges of the nineteenth century caught in a slow decline that would become a much swifter decline following World War II. The world we see in Raffles seems so old simply because it doesn’t exist anymore; even the scenes of Raffles and his fiancé Gwen (Kay Francis) dancing in a nightclub take on an old-fashioned sheen in our post-disco reality, where clubs mean dark rooms and thumping stereos, not bright lights and big bands.

The actual age of Raffles is irrelevant, then. It may well be one of the oldest movies I watch this month, but it is the time and place it captured on celluloid that make it seem so old. Compare it to a movie like Pandora’s Box, released one year earlier and without sound, and you’ll probably find Pandora’s Box the more modern of the two by far. The themes in Pandora’s Box—sex; jealousy; destructive personalities—are timeless; the setting is Germany during the Weimer Republic, but the story could take place anywhere, at any time. Raffles isn’t nearly so flexible, but it is still an entertaining look at a part of the past no longer available to us.

Grade: B