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The Sleeping Tiger More at IMDbPro »
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| Index | 14 reviews in total |
11 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
interesting psychodrama, 1 September 2007
Author:
mukava991 from United States
Dirk Bogarde attempts to mug Alexander Knox at gunpoint in a dark London street. Knox overcomes him by twisting his arm. Next, Alexis Smith, Knox's wife, comes home from a trip to Paris, sees Bogarde in her house, assumes he is one of her psychiatrist husband's patients, but is told that he is a criminal who is living under her roof for six months as an experiment in criminal rehabilitation which her husband is carrying out as a humane alternative to sending the young man to jail. She accepts the arrangement with barely a shrug. Bogarde immediately proceeds to verbally and physically abuse the house maid and act rudely toward Smith. Yet for some reason she is attracted to him and soon they are having a hot affair under the husband's nose. And on and on it goes. One startling development after another. There are elements of the overly simplistic psychiatric rehab genre reminiscent of Hollywood classics like Now, Voyager and Spellbound but with a more realistic look and feel. The music is intense and draws attention to itself, from the cacophonous noise that Smith listens to on her home record player to the sizzling live jazz at the Soho dive where she goes to loosen up with her secret lover. Bogarde is supposed to be a low-life criminal but his polished accent and genteel mannerisms seem thoroughly middle-class and this is never explained. Alexander Knox seems made of wood yet is somehow believable as the kind of intellectually preoccupied and unflappable person who just might come up with the idea of inviting a mugger into his home as an eccentric form of research. And Smith, icily self-contained at the beginning, gradually gets a chance to do some dynamic emoting. She's very good in this. The title of the film symbolizes the wild impulses that sleep within us, waiting to be awakened. From the 2007 vantage point there are no important or original social or intellectual insights here but the way the film is edited, photographed and scored are deliberately jarring without distracting from the film's intent. Losey wants to shake us up and he succeeds.
13 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
In the main, lousy Losey, 16 October 2000
Author:
marcslope
Joseph Losey, working under a pseudonym after his blacklisting, didn't
want
to make this overbaked British melodrama. And who can blame him, given the
heavy-breathing histrionics of the screenplay, a ridiculous concoction
about
a psychiatrist and his sexually frustrated wife harboring a hoodlum. The
plot turns are unconvincing, the music hilariously overblown, and
Alexander
Knox, as the shrink, terminally uninteresting.
What makes this mess watchable is its game imitation of American noir
tropes
(dark alleys, femmes fatales, car chases), and some good very early
rock-and-roll/jazz in the pub sequences. Also, the film can be viewed as a
warmup for the later Losey-Bogarde collaborations, which explored similar
themes (guilt, moral ambiguity, the nature of evil) much more
expertly.
9 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Who's Your Daddy?, 27 April 2007
Author:
Hitchcoc from United States
It's just a bit too much. The good doctor is attacked at gunpoint. He disarms the bad guy, then brings him home to dinner, where his high strung wife spars with the guy. Of course, the two eventually begin a movie long tryst. Dirk Bogarde is a bad boy who is a bundle of anger. He usually gets what he wants but carries more baggage than a porter at an airport. Alexis Smith is the femme fatale. She is older and bored with her psychologist husband, who is determined to resurrect the lad. He is willing to allow this man to do whatever he wants: bringing women to the house, bossing around the help, robbing jewelry stores and businesses. He is pursued by a cop who is on to him but has respect for the doctor and backs off on an arrest. It's hard to believe that this man should give a rip about Bogarde, but somehow he's willing to withdraw. The weakest part of the movie is when it all falls into place. It's so pat. A contemporary film would have built the house a card at a time; this happens in milliseconds. Then we have the denouement which I will not spoil. Let me just say it was a disappointment. The movie is visually sharp and the acting is pretty good. I never really like Alexis Smith much and she is a little grating here. Still, it's a decent performance and the subject is a little ahead of its time.
9 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Not tiger but tigress – Alexis Smith walks away with the movie, 29 August 2002
Author:
bmacv from Western New York
A more apt title would have been The Sleeping Tigress, for it's Alexis
Smith's performance that holds this movie together and lends it erotic
friction. Despite her old-money looks and regal carriage, Smith numbered
among the many talents which Hollywood mis- and under- used. She claimed
attention in two late-forties Bogart vehicles, Conflict (where she was good)
and The Two Mrs. Carrolls (in which she was even better, and held her own
against Barbara Stanwyck). But most of her movie career consisted of
mediocre roles – the ones the star actresses turned down or had to refuse
owing to other commitments. (It wasn't until Stephen Sondheim's Follies on
Broadway in the ‘70s that her own star shone).
In this film from Joseph Losey's English exile following the Hollywood witch
hunt, she plays the bored wife of psychotherapist Alexander Knox (and with
him pottering around the house, who wouldn't be bored?). Bleeding-heart
Knox takes a troubled young man with a prison record (Dirk Bogarde) under
his roof in hopes of performing a therapeutic Pygmalion job on him. At
first Smith acts snooty, then grows intrigued, and finally throws herself at
Bogarde with pent-up abandon.
Comes the crunch as Knox, in a three-minute Freudian breakthrough
reminiscent of Lee J. Cobb's instant rehabilitation of William Holden in The
Dark Past, turns the lying, thieving, abusive Bogarde into a contrite
milquetoast. When Bogarde then bids her farewell, Smith careens into
dementia every bit as swiftly as Bogarde was healed and feigns an assault in
hopes that Knox will defend her `honor' with that gun every therapist keeps
in his desk drawer....
It's a lame story that might have been more convincing in an American
context; the London setting and British conventions (in particular Knox's)
stifle it. Bogarde started out playing this sort of charming wrong'un but
isn't especially memorable here (except for his towering pompadour that must
have been borrowed from Mario Lanza). But Smith's feral feline makes The
Sleeping Tiger worth the ticket price.
7 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
THE SLEEPING TIGER (Joseph Losey, 1954) ***, 21 February 2007
Author:
MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta
A certain Victor Hanbury is credited with directing this remarkable
psychological drama but that won't fool any of Joseph Losey's admirers
since it shares not only thematic similarities with one of his most
notable American films, THE PROWLER (1951), but was indeed the turning
point of his career in many ways: blacklisted by Hollywood for his
Communist leanings, Losey fled first to Italy and then to Britain,
remaining in Europe for the rest of his days. THE SLEEPING TIGER also
marked the start of a fruitful collaboration (resulting in five films)
between Losey and star Dirk Bogarde, who here shows a definite maturity
miles away from the bland matinée idol roles he typically played during
this period; the film itself has an intensity not found in contemporary
British cinema.
Alexis Smith (terrific in one of her last starring roles) and Alexander
Knox (playing his part in the Glenn Ford manner – where a quiet
exterior conceals a strong personality, hence the film's title) are the
married couple whose sheltered suburban lives are invaded by smart but
incorrigible thug Bogarde; Knox is a psychiatrist whom the young man
had tried to hold up, but has the tables turned on him and is
subsequently kept on in the former's house as a 'guinea pig' – echoes
of BLIND ALLEY (1939) and THE DARK PAST (1948) – where he stirs up the
passionate instincts of the doctor's frustrated American wife. Needless
to say, there's no happy ending for any of the characters: the climax
provides plenty of fireworks and twists – with Losey's ironic symbolism
being maintained till the film's very last shot. Composer Malcolm
Arnold adapts his score to the each of the film's moods, alternating
between the sleazy and the histrionic.
Unfortunately, the poor-quality Public Domain print I watched bears
some evident signs of wear-and-tear as there are a handful of jarring
jump-cuts throughout (resulting in a running-time of 87 minutes against
the official 89); several years back, the film was released on PAL VHS
but no official DVD is in sight yet in any region (a status, alas, in
common with the majority of Losey's work prior to the 1960s).
2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
"In the dark forest of every human personality there's a tiger, a sleeping tiger"., 31 July 2011
Author:
classicsoncall from United States
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I enjoyed reading the other contributor views on this board for "The
Sleeping Tiger", particularly since I don't know anything about
director Joseph Losey's political leanings and his team-ups with actor
Dirk Bogarde. Taking the picture at face value, I had some trouble
right from the get-go with Dr. Clive Esmond's (Alexander Knox)
willingness to bring a common street thug into his home for the purpose
of rehabilitation. Considering the doctor's age, one would surmise that
he would have had enough time in his professional career to figure out
that this strategy would have a predictably low success rate. After
catching Frank (Bogarde) and icy veined wife Glenda (Alexis Smith) in
the kitchen together, you would think he would have 'gotten it', but he
still remains strangely accepting of his patient's living arrangements.
Still, it's kind of fascinating to see these characters go through
their paces. London's Metro Club was the perfect destination for Glenda
to experience the 'other' side, enticed by Frank's admonition to "go
downstairs and put on something..., a little cheaper". For someone who
despised rude behavior and bad manners, Glenda willingly casts aside
those reservations for a veritable walk on the wild side because of her
boring and stuffy marriage to Clive. All fairly predictable.
Actually it's those Metro Club scenes that sparked the most interest
for me, a jazzy precursor to the decade later birth of the British
sound. You have to keep an eye on some of the dance partners who appear
downright goofy, and was it just me, or did Frank's chummy squeeze from
the Metro wear the same dress on three different occasions. Just an
observation.
Well even if the story stretches credibility to the breaking point,
it's bound to hold your interest in a train wreck sort of way. I really
had to groan when the finale brought the sleeping tiger connection to
the title in a visually jarring way with the crash through that road
sign. Does anyone have ANY idea what that sign was all about?
2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
One-Trick Cyclist, 12 June 2009
Author:
writers_reign from London, England
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Several ironies are involved here not least the two irons playing heterosexual lovers, then there's the writer, Daniel Frye, who was really two other people, first Carl Foreman, who wrote the original treatment and Harold Buchman who gave it a buff job and finally there's director Victor Hanbury, in reality Joseph Losey who, like the two writers had been 'blacklisted' in the states and was thus obliged to work under a John Doe. In 1954 average filmgoers in England cared only that a given film provided ninety minutes of divertisment; terms like 'blacklist', 'HUAC', 'Hollywood Ten' 'Unfriendly Witness' and the like were never mentioned in the film magazines of the day; Picturegoer and Picture Show were little more than PR for the studios, a mixture of painless, positive reviews for even the most banal movie and studio-supplied puffs on the private lives of the stars and upcoming films so that the average film-goer would bask in the knowledge that Alexis Smith was firmly married and Dirk Bogarde a babe magnet who implicitly slept with his pick of the Rank Charm School as and when it suited him. The film itself is pure, undiluted tosh that wouldn't stand scrutiny beneath a Toc H light-bulb let alone a strong light but it is watchable even after a half century.
2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Highly-strung woman seeks to escape her dreary life, 27 August 2007
Author:
didi-5 from United Kingdom
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Actually, this film isn't all bad. 'The Sleeping Tiger' refers to
Alexis Smith's bored doctor's wife, who decides to throw herself at the
bit of rough from the criminal classes (Dirk Bogarde) who her husband
is hoping to rehabilitate. I suppose Bogarde's Frank is a British
equivalent to the angry young men of Brando or Dean, but being British
he is just a bit too mannered to be convincing.
Smith's descent into frustration and anger after being rejected is
unconvincing and done too quickly, meaning that the end sequences are
rushed and unbelievable. Still, up to that point, the film is not bad.
The relationship between Smith, Bogarde, and Smith's husband (Alexander
Knox), is played out well and the film manages to be fairly engrossing
and somewhat ahead of its time.
6 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
The tiger does not sleep tonight, 4 May 2008
Author:
dbdumonteil
At the time ,like so many others such as Dalton Trumbo,Joseph Losey
used to work under pseudos because of his commie friends.
"The sleeping tiger" predates permanent features in the director's
work:
-the intruder ,be it a servant "(eponymous movie) ,a licentious gypsy
("the gypsy and the gentleman" ),some kind of doppelganger ("Monsieur
Klein" ,perhaps his masterpiece), a mysterious girl ("secret
ceremony"),who makes the place his very own ,physically ("The servant"
) or mentally ('Monsieur Klein" ).Dirk Bogarde is fascinating in his
part of a young offender :his acting is so subtle we do not know when
the movie ends whether he is a victim or a perverse person,probably
both.
-the depiction of the decay of a milieu the intruder will destroy : the
old aristocracy in "the gypsy and the gentleman" ,the bourgeoisie in
"the servant" the world of the war profiteers in " Monsieur Klein" .
When Alexis Smith tells her husband's guinea pig that she got a raw
deal too when she was a child but she made her way of life just the
same ,the guy knows better :"because you think you are happy now?"
A shrink wants to study a case of delinquency and wakens the sleeping
tiger...which is perhaps not the one you are thinking of.
Superlative performances by the three leads.
Ultimately disappointing, 26 August 2011
Author:
evening1 from New York City
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
This movie was incredibly compelling until the last half-hour or so.
Then it all goes to hell when the Dirk Bogarde character undergoes an
unconvincing transformation and the Alexis Smith character turns
vampire demon.
Despite the unlikely plotting, Bogarde's performance is magnificent
(I've never seen him in anything in which he wasn't stellar). Ms.
Stewart has an incredible face; I hadn't been aware of her previously
and for the most part she's fascinating to watch.
The extremely hackneyed and cowardly ending of this film was
reminiscent of "Jules and Jim." The latter worked; this one fails
miserably. What a cop-out.
As wonderfully as this film started out, I can't recommend it.
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