Please don't spend money on this.

Just so...so bad

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is a tedious movie. The real villains are the clunky adaptation (it's embarrassingly easy to tell that the source material was a novel) and witless screenplay.On the credit side, considering the budget was tight due to wartime austerity, the look of the film isn't at all bad. And the performances are, by and large, OK, except for Phyllis Calvert, who is terrific - a miracle considering the potential for winsomeness, a pit into which she most definitely does not fall. Ms Calvert, with a lot less to go on, is as accomplished as Olivia de Havilland in Gone With The Wind.The one absolutely unbearable aspect of The Man in Grey is the dreadfully conceived depiction of a black serving boy. No matter that he's meant to be a sympathetic character. Played badly by a white boy in black-face make-up, it is impossible to by-pass this example of condescending racism.Grim.

One line of dialogue stood out for me and actually made the film; Lockwood and Calvert are travelling by coach to Calvert's London home and she asks Lockwood (who has just played Desdemona to Granger's Othello) how long Granger has been an actor. 'As far as I'm concerned he never was' replies Lockwood, a brilliant summation of Granger's talent, the lack of which, of course, failed to prevent him achieving film stardom. This Regency meller stands up remarkably well and if Mason and Lockwood are slightly over the top, Calvert a tad TOO twee, as if auditioning for any parts Olivia de Havilland might reject, and Granger too inept probably at the time - and wartime at that - they were all quite acceptable. Certainly worth a look.

James Mason (like Richard Burton, Edward Arnold, and many other splendid actors - and actresses) never received the Oscar for any of his performances. This is one of the unfair side issues regarding the Academy Awards, as a measuring stick to film stardom. Everyone who has seen Mason's performances (and the others I mentioned) may know they are appearing in a "turkey", but they are serving their sections of the "turkey" with deluxe dressing. When they are appearing in "filet mignon" or the like, they really reach the heights. So, despite his lack of Academy recognition, Mason is remembered with great fondness by everyone who enjoys movies. To this day his voice is imitated in cartoons if you want to see a snooty, aristocratic villain.Yet I said "villain". How can I call the wounded, deserted IRA gunman Johnny (ODD MAN OUT) or Norman Main (A STAR IS BORN) or Humbert Humbert (LOLITA) a "villain". Yes, he did play Mr. Van Dam in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, but even that fellow had his less villainous moments (too few perhaps).The fact is, when Mason came to the U.S. to appear in Hollywood films in the late 1940s, it was as one of Britain's best villains. This was odd. He had been in films since the late 1930s, and had played a shell shock victim in THE HILL HAVE EYES as well as other parts. In FIRE OVER ENGLAND (an early role) he was an English Catholic nobleman who is planning to aid King Philip of Spain (for reasons of politics and religious freedom) but who is drowned fleeing the police of Elizabeth I. None of these performances had gained him his fame, deserved as it was. It was THE MAN IN GRAY that gained him fame.Set in Regency England (c. 1790 - 1837), Mason was what was termed "a Regency Buck". This was a fashionable, upper crust Regency aristocrat or wealthy man who enjoyed his privileges - frequently at the expense of everyone else around them. When Leslie Howard played Sir Percy Blakeney in THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, his character is a foppish version of "the Regency Buck", acting the buffoon at the expense of Col Higgensbottom and even the Prince of Wales - regarding cravats - to hide his serious mission). Mason's character is actually a more openly forceful version of this character. The Marquis of Rohan is a great grandee of England (despite having the last name of a noted French Aristocratic house - connected to the "Affair of the Diamond Necklace"). He is fully aware of his position, and the subservient position of everyone else involved with it.Phyllis Calvert is Clarissa, the daughter of a local good family, who was a close friend of Margaret Lockwood (Hester). Their relations is similar to that of Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp in VANITY FAIR, as good girl and bad girl. Rohan chooses to marry Clarissa because she is a proper (and subservient) wife to breed an heir. Clarissa tries to help Hester by getting her a good position in the household (bad mistake). Rohan is soon bored by marriage, and Clarissa mistakes this as a signal that she is on her own. She meets a traveling actor named Rokeby (Stewart Granger) and starts a relationship with him - egged on by Hester.Hester intention is to reveal it at the right time to Rohan, and replace the disgraced Clarissa. And she does. But it actually does two things. He does go after Rokeby to kill him. But after taking care of that problem, Rohan finds Clarissa going into physical decline. And his better character comes out. He tries to help his wife, but nothing he does helps...and she finally dies. The Marquis is heartbroken. SPOILER COMING UP: Hester still blind to the reality of the situation, confronts Rohan, and reveals her own passions. But now Rohan is fully aware of why Hester made her revelations, and what it has led to. Furious at being used, and at his own cost and of the woman he got to love, Rohan grabs a horse whip and whips Hester to death! It is an orchestrated, violent conclusion (and it's violence may be why the film is rarely shown on television). Despite making Rohan a killer at the end, because he is killing the real villain in the plot Rohan gets the audience to cheer him on! He becomes the "anti-hero" of the story. It gained Mason his international standing as "a man you love to hate". And it opened the doors to future Hollywood stardom.

The Man in Grey was the first and probably the most successful of the Gainsborough melodramas. The lavish regency tale centres around the aristocratic Clarissa Richmond (Phyllis Calvert) who dutifully enters into an loveless arranged marriage with the cold hearted Lord Rohan (James Mason)- the Man in Grey of the title.Love and intrigue are to enter Clarissa's life when a chance meeting with an old school friend, the scheming Hester (Margaret Lockwood), leads her to the dashing Rokeby (Stewart Granger).The story reaches its dramatic conclusion through twists and turns of plot and excellent performances from who can be called the four cornerstones of the war time British cinema - Stewart Granger, James Mason, Phyllis Calvert and Margaret Lockwood.The Man in Grey is my personal favorite of all the Gainsborough films, it is high drama and escapism. The Man in Grey is definitely worth another look.