Tonight’s film is ‘The Scapegoat’ made in 1959, starring Alec Guinness and Bette Davis and is based on a book by Daphne du Marier. It’s an interesting plot with a very satisfying twist at the end.

John Barratt, played by Alec Guinness is a lecturer in French language at a British college who is taking his holidays in France. Barrat lives a humdrum existence with no relationships in Britain and hardly any family to speak of.

Whilst in France he encounters a French nobleman the Count Jacques De Gue, also played by Guinness, and they realise that they bear a startling resemblance to one another, in fact they could even be identical twins. De Gue goes for a drink with Barratt and it emerges that the two men have remarkably different lives even though they look alike.

De Gue gets Barratt drunk and takes him back to Barratt’s hotel room. They start drinking and De Gue drugs one of Barratt’s drinks.

When Barratt awakes his own clothes and identification papers etc are all gone and have been replaced with the clothes and identity of De Gue. De Gue’s chauffeur picks him, Barratt, up from hotel having been given instructions to do so and takes him to De Gue’s country house. At the house Barratt is faced with people who assume that he is De Gue and that he is having a delusional episode.

Barratt decides to go along with the charade after a while and grows to like De Gue’s family, including the bed ridden matriach played by Bette Davis, almost as much as De Gue himself hates them. There is then a tragic death that Barratt finds himself suspected for and he starts to realise that there may be darker reasons for De Gue wanting to change places with Barratt than merely a prank by someone who wants to escape their problems for a while.

I really enjoyed this movie and I hope you do to.