RAFFLES

US, 1940, 72 minutes, Black and white.
David Niven, Olivia de Havilland, Dudley Digges, May Whitty, Douglas Walton, Lionel Pape, E. E. Clive, Peter Godfrey.
Directed by Sam Wood.

Raffles is a short-running rather elegant crime thriller. It offered David Niven a star role as he was rising in his Hollywood career. Olivia de Havilland was a charming leading lady. Direction was by Sam Wood who was emerging as a director of genteel entertainments as well as Americana.

This film is very British in the '30s vein, the drawing-room elegant comedies of Noel Coward and other writers: it shows a realistic/satiric portrait of British society at the time - embodied in such stalwarts as Dame May Whitty. Niven is Raffles, a debonair member of society who is actually a thief. There is the fascination of seeing him at work, and seeing him cover his tracks - and his romance with Olivia. The story had been previously filmed with John Barrymore and Ronald Colman. David Niven fits into this tradition. Further films on this theme were Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant and Rough Cut, Don Siegel's thriller with Burt Reynolds and, in fact, David Niven as an ageing Raffles.