THE HEART OF THE MATTER (1953)

Cast

Plot

Sierra Leone 1942; Trevor Howard gives perhaps his best performance as the humane deputy police commissioner in debt to a local trader and being blackmailed for having an affair outside his failed marriage. In the book, riddled with guilt, he kills himself, one of the deepest sins of his Catholic faith, but in the film his death is accidental. Nevertheless this tale of torment is an atmospheric and noteworthy adaptation of one of Greene's works and a superbly acted depictation of religious and moral angst.