By his own admission (in a brief introduction here), Greene had
"completely forgotten" the existence of an unpublished story called
The Tenth Man - sold in 1944 to MGM, which dug it out of the
archives in 1983. And, if that seems like an unpromising omen, so
does the fact that Greene fills out the first half of this slight
volume with "two more ideas for films" - both of them thin,
shorthand-style scenarios. It's a pleasant surprise, then, to find
that The Tenth Man itself is a more-than-respectable novella - far
from a major addition to the Greene oeuvre, but a curious, intense,
ironic tale reminiscent of Georges Simenon's better exercises in
darkly psychological suspense. The setting is Nazi-occupied France
during WW II; the Germans have filled a prison with innocent
Frenchmen - to use as hostages in case of anti-German activities by
the French townfolk. So, after two German soldiers in the town are
murdered, the "orders are that one man in every ten shall be shot
in this camp." And when a single, middle-aged Paris lawyer named
Chavel draws one of the fatal lots, he offers all his wealth -
cash, country house - to anyone who'll take his place before the
firing squad: a young fellow nicknamed "Janvier" agrees, making
sure that his new fortune will be passed on to his mother and
sister. Jump, then, to postwar France - where the shamed lawyer,
now calling himself Chariot, can find no work, is near starvation.
. . and pathetically arrives at his old country-house, now
inhabited (gypsy-style) by Janvier's old mother and young sister
Therese. But, though Therese is obsessed with hatred for the
cowardly lawyer who enticed her brother to his death, she never
suspects that "Chariot" is this very man: she lets him stay on as
handyman; he slowly falls hopelessly in love with her, unable to
share his dark, guilty secret. And when a thoroughgoing villain - a
con-man/actor who falsely claims to be the real Chavel - later
arrives at the house, anti-hero Chariot becomes something of a true
hero, redeeming his previous cowardice. Less than fully satisfying,
with characters who remain only sketches - but full of sharp Greene
touches (including a button-down priest) amid the slightly murky
Simenon-esque landscape. (Kirkus Reviews)
In a prison in Occupied France one in every ten men is to be shot. The prisoners draw lots among themselves - and for rich lawyer Louis Chav el it seems that his whole life has been leading up to an agonizing an d crucial failure of nerve. Graham Greene wrote THE TENTH MAN in 1944, when he was under a two-year contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and the manuscript lay forgotten in MGM's archives until 1983. It was publish ed two years later.
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