This may be the most outrageous rape of a good novel ever committed in the history of film-making. Graham Greene's original novel, set in a grey war-ridden England, is divided into four parts. The first part is titled The Unhappy Man - and in bounces Ray Milland with a self-assured Hollywood smirk! The other main character - a young, grave and desillusioned Austrian woman - is portrayed by Marjorie Reynolds as a flirty little thing. The central theme of the original novel is developed through the contrast between the first part and the second, titled The Happy Man. This second part has been obliterated in the film, and so has the novel's dialogue, its portraiture of characters and most of the plot, thus entirely robbing the story of its meaning. A cinéast friend tells me that the film has been credited for a number of inventive film effects, but then he has not read the book. It is no extenuating circumstance that the rapist has proceeded with a certain finesse in cutting up and disposing of the body. To anyone who has read the book, the incredible punchline closing the film is a sensational parody of book-busting films - only the parody is unintentional.