England Made Me is a 1973 British drama film directed by Peter Duffell, starring Peter Finch, Michael York, Hildegarde Neil, and Michael Hordern, and based on the 1935 novel England Made Me by Graham Greene.
It concerns Anthony Farrant, a naive young Englishman who visits Germany on the way home from abroad, and finds a job with charismatic financier Erich Krogh. While Anthony was taught to value fairness and decency, in Erich's world opportunism, corruption, and decadence hold sway.
The film changes the novel's setting from Sweden to Nazi Germany. Duffell explained that he changed the location due to his lack of knowledge of Sweden in the 1930s, the use of imagery the audience would recognise and the growing menace in Europe of the time.
Plot France, 1935. Englishwoman Kate Farrant works for industrialist Erich Krogh, whose mistress she is. She reunites with her brother Tony, who has quit yet another job. Kate is returning to Germany; she persuades Tony to come with her, saying that Krogh could find him work.
In a Berlin bar, Tony gets talking to Minty, an English journalist. Minty hopes Tony can get him information on Krogh, for which he offers to pay. At a formal meeting, Krogh suggests Tony have a job liaising with publicity; Tony eagerly says he's already made contact with local journalists, which horrifies Krogh.
While Tony flirts with Liz, an English girl he has met, Krogh discusses his worries with Kate: his business is failing, he needs investors, and the only option left to him verges on fraud. Tony wants to have sex with Liz but doesn't know anyone in town, so they visit Minty. When Minty says he has to leave for work, Tony asks if he and Liz can stay. After they've had sex, she asks if he'll return to England with her, but he can't because of his job.
Kate tells Tony she's marrying Krogh so the three of them can be together forever, as she's always wanted. Krogh calls to say he is throwing a party at his lakeside villa and has invited a Reichsminister. He wants to leave the country, probably for England. When he understands Krogh's business plans, Tony is shocked: 'It's a swindle!' Kate emphasizes the importance of the press not finding out.
Tony sees Liz off at the airport. Minty is there, spying on them. Tony promises Liz that he'll abandon his job and rejoin her in England within the week. He sees Minty and invites him for a drink. Tony tells Minty about his plans to return to England, the looming party, and Kate and Krogh's marriage. Minty instantly scurries away. Krogh's assistant Haller tells Krogh that the Reichsminister suspects something (Krogh's firm have been buying their own stocks) and will stop Krogh leaving the country.
Idling at Krogh's offices, Tony leafs through a file. When Kate enters, she grabs it and warns him to keep quiet. Tony tells her he's returning to England; she correctly intuits it's because of Liz: 'I can't appeal to you like she can!' Knowing that he'll be broke when he returns, she gives him money, wondering why she can refuse him nothing.
At the party, guests get increasingly drunk on Krogh's champagne, while Krogh and Haller play cards with Nazi bigwigs: the Reichsminister asks Krogh 'for a little informal chat tomorrow'.
Fromm, a Jewish acquaintance of Krogh's, appears at the villa. His son has been arrested and he wants an audience with Krogh. Haller beats him and throws him out. Tony sees this and tries to intervene, though Kate restrains him. Tony rants angrily against Krogh, mentioning that he has falsified business records. Kate impulsively silences Tony by kissing him on the lips. Haller witnesses all this.
The following day, Kate reads in an English-language newspaper that she's marrying Krogh. Krogh knows this is because Tony has told Minty. He thinks Tony's departure 'inconvenient' but believes he can stop it.
Tony writes Minty a letter. When Kate enters, he rapidly hides it. On their way back from the disastrous meeting with the Reichsminister, Krogh and Haller discuss ways of stopping Tony returning to England. Haller suggests getting him into a card game and making sure he loses, so that he won't have money to travel.
At the game, Tony chats about his impending departure as Haller and Krogh exchange glances. Everyone folds except Haller and Tony, who while talking about his terrible hand has been practicing a poker face: he has a straight flush. Tony collects his winnings and walks to the station. When he stops to light a cigarette, he sees Haller behind him.
Haller returns to the villa, looking shaken. As dawn breaks over the lake, Tony's body can be seen floating.
Tony's letter arrives at Minty's lodgings, but before he can open it, Haller arrives. He bribes Minty, whose newspaper then runs a piece saying Tony's death was accidental. Kate packs her belongings and walks out on Krogh.
Main cast Peter Finch as Erich Krogh Michael York as Anthony Farrant Hildegarde Neil as Kate Farrant Joss Ackland as Haller Michael Hordern as F. Minty Tessa Wyatt as Liz Davidge Michael Sheard as Fromm Richard Gibson as young Tony Lalla Ward as young Kate William Baskiville as Stein Demeter Bitenc as Reichsminister Vladan Živković as Heinrich Vlado Bacic as Hartmann Mirjana Nikolic as Nikki
Production Development Graham Greene repeatedly named the novel as a favourite among his own works: "I have a particularly soft spot for England Made Me"; "I have always had a soft spot in my heart for my fifth published novel, England Made Me (a feeling which has not been shared by the general public)". He retained the film rights for over 30 years, hoping (according to some sources) to adapt it himself. Critic Philip Strick suggests that Greene, fully aware of the liberties moviemakers could take with source novels, was reluctant in this case because of the book's personal nature.
American producer Jack Levin approached Peter Duffell to direct in 1971, after Lars-Magnus Lindgren and Alan Schneider had proved unavailable. The screenplay to be used, by Wolf Mankowitz, retained the Swedish setting but moved the action to the present day: Duffell recalled "lots of pot smoking and copulation. I really didn't reckon it at all".
The script ultimately used, by Duffell and Desmond Cory, stayed in the 1930s but moved the plot from Sweden to Germany; it also removed the detail that Tony and Kate are twins. Duffell admitted that "One of the key things in the novel is that it is about siblings. Yet one had seen so many disastrous attempts to do twins on the screen."
Pre-Production Duffell's first choice to play Krogh was Joss Ackland (who ended up in the subsidiary role of Haller). The film-makers needed a box-office draw in order to get financial backing, however, and approached Peter Finch for the part. Finch, who had appeared in an earlier Greene adaptation, The Heart of the Matter (1953), admired the novelist and accepted. Even after Finch's involvement had made it financially viable, the film's budget was less than one million dollars.
Michael York rejected the offer to play Tony, as he had just played an Englishman in 1930s Germany in Cabaret ("it would have been just a repeat performance"), then felt he'd made "a stupid, superficial judgment" and called the producers back to accept. Duffell considered Susannah York for the part of Kate, but she was committed to filming Images for Robert Altman. Also unavailable was Denholm Elliott, his first choice for Minty, ultimately played by Michael Hordern.
Filming Shooting took place in Belgrade and other parts of Yugoslavia. York as Tony makes his first appearance, disembarking from a steamship, in Rijeka harbour; the scene where he and Kate reunite at a French seaside resort was filmed in Opatija; the lakeside villa where Krogh throws a party for Nazi dignitaries was actually on the shores of Lake Bled and had been used as a residence by Josip Broz Tito.
Greene had based the character of Swedish financier Erik Krogh on Ivar Kreuger: reimagined as a German, "Erich Krogh" resembled a "Krupp-type munitions tycoon", and during filming Finch studied William Manchester's history of the Krupp dynasty for an understanding of the story's background.
Soundtrack The soundtrack album John Scott – England Made Me to the film was released on vinyl, LP by DJM Records (UK) in 1973.
The song Remembering (written-by John Scott and Arthur Hamilton, arranged by Larry Wilcox) sung by Lana Cantrell, was released on vinyl, LP (US) by East Coast Records.
Themes Among the film's changes to the novel is that it foregrounds political themes. Greene commented on his original novel, "The subject – apart from the economic background of the thirties and that sense of capitalism staggering from crisis to crisis – was simple and unpolitical, a brother and sister in the confusion of incestuous love." By contrast, he said of the film:
Patrick Gibbs agreed: "the chilly central character of the international financier [is] made considerably more sympathetic by his frauds now being worked not on investors, but on the Nazi government".
Les Keyser, however, thought the Krogh of the film just as ruthless as in Greene's novel, as complicit in Nazism as Greene's Krogh is in capitalism: "Even Krogh's attempts to dupe the Nazis and flee to England are a form of self-deception: he seems blind to the fact that he (like Krupp) is one of the damned. His inhumane scheming and his role in the treachery that destroys Tony and alienates Kate is an embryonic form of the national horrors to come." He summed up the character as "a Krupp figure too blind to see his role in the rise of a fascism he purports to reject".
Keyser noted the role of antisemitism in the film's plot, embodied in the character of Fromm: "Duffell replaces the original focus in the novel on the plight of labor with a focus on the plight of Jews." He also commented on "the reversal of sexual roles" between the two siblings: Kate has acquired "all the masculine traits of reliability and efficiency... leaving Tony only charm, a rather feminine virtue." Gibbs likewise noticed "the strong character of the sister complementing the brother's weakness with jobs and women", though he also remarked "it is he who turns out, so awkwardly for Krogh, to have moral scruples".
Critical reception Derek Malcolm in The Guardian called the film "a careful, intelligent and very viewable film with a lot of atmosphere... If it looks like "Cabaret" without music, it is probably because Isherwood's Berlin stories had a similar sense of decay and gay despair". He commended all the main players and summed up, "it's certainly one of the most watchable British efforts on the market just now and by some way the weightiest offering of the week".
David Robinson, in The Times, was unsure that relocating the action to 1930s Berlin was wise – "the familiar symbols (not even excluding the obligatory cabaret and decadent party scene) remove any of the ambivalence of the novel's original atmosphere" – but singled out for praise the production values and the acting, especially Hordern's supporting performance as Minty, "flapping around in a greasy mac, and peering through a fog of smoke as he indecently mouths his worn-out fag-ends".
Patrick Gibbs wrote a positive review for The Daily Telegraph, calling the film "a very polished little piece". He felt that the change of setting from Sweden to Germany was warranted by Greene's own comment, in a reissue of the novel, that the period had been overshadowed by "the rise of Hitler".
In another positive review, for The Sunday Times, Derek Prouse likewise thought the transposing of the action "valid": "the locations and set dressing are a potent asset in the creation of an atmosphere of quiet menace".