Rent The Spanish Gardener (1956)

Emotional stand-off. - The Spanish Gardener review by Steve

Intense psychological drama, beautifully shot in Vistavision on the Costa Brava. A divorced minor diplomat (Michael Hordern) indignant at being stranded in a Spanish backwater grows to resent the influence of his charismatic gardener (Dirk Bogarde) over his lonely, browbeaten son (11 year old Jon Whiteley).

Bogarde and Whiteley were reunited after making Hunted, four years earlier.  Hordern has the lead role as a repressed, austere functionary who grinds down everyone to obscure his own inadequacy. And he is most convincing. It seems odd today that the rural Spanish house is staffed by British actors, but Bogarde is a natural for these psychodramas.

And he has never looked more handsome, in sumptuous Technicolor. Director Philip Leacock gets another plausible performance out of Whiteley who he first cast as an eight year old in The Kidnappers. The potential for sexual subtext is avoided in favour of a more family friendly experience, but maybe such an approach in 1956 would now date the film.

The principal weakness is a horrible Hollywood ending which strays far from AJ Cronin's source novel. All conflicts are resolved after a frantic catharsis in a climactic thunderstorm, which feels awkwardly drafted in from gothic melodrama. But what lingers in the memory is the triangle of emotive, but well judged performances, and the rich photography.