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Ivor Novello and Constance Collier's play (under their shared nom-de-plume, David L'Estrange) inspired a successful trio of films
starring Novello, as Pierre Boucheron, 'the Rat,' a jewel thief and chief of a
Parisian underworld centred on the White Coffin Club. In this world he rules
with a flamboyant, if melancholic, charm that has the club girls fighting over
him and the men in awe of him.
When he meets his match in demimondaine Zelie de Chaumet, the sparks fly as
each tries to gain the upper hand over the other. She is beautiful and powerful
and used to obedience. But so is he. She represents success - albeit a corrupt
one - and he is torn between these superficial victories and something more
noble. This is represented by Odile, an innocent with whom he lives, though more
as a brother than a lover. The only time we see an outdoor, naturalistic scene
is through Odile's eyes, and it is the only time we see the Rat smile without a
sneer. It is his inner conflict, once Odile has taken a murder rap for him, that
is at the core of the narrative.
Pierre must choose between a life of relative luxury in the heart of
fashionable Parisian society and poverty with his conscience and sense of
natural justice intact. The tension between these two competing desires
literally drives him mad. This element of the film sits oddly with the adventure
genre as it developed in the 1920s. Much has been said of Novello's performances
and their relationship to war neuroses; his character's descent into hysteria in
The Rat would certainly hint at a man with a 'past', as so many of the WWI generation were, and that sense of mystery is fitting also for a film that has appropriated many of the trappings of the Louis Feuillade crime serial
(Fantomas, France, 1913; Les Vampires, France 1915. The Club in particular, with
its morbid coffin-shaped interior windows (white coffins are those made for dead
children), apache dances and fumes of absinthe, conjures up a world where it is
acceptable for a hero to be a thief, a womaniser and a murderer. One can see why the character and setting would have appealed to the British audience - so much more sensational than the drawings rooms of the West End.
Bryony Dixon
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1. Rat in a hole (4:00)
