Guy Green and Samuel Fuller ("the naked kiss" ,1964) were the first directors to tackle a hot topic : pedophilia ; the word is not mentioned in both movies at a time it was a taboo word ;whereas Fuller's movie dealt with a wealthy man who attracted a little girl in his luxury mansion , Guy Green 's movie is about redemption ,what happens AFTER the hero committed child molestation and spent five years in jail .
Now out of jail ,the hero looks self-conscious , Stuart Whitman underplays his role,quite rightly so . He knows that his past can resurface. Although he's helped by a psychiatrist (Rod Steiger) and a colleague (Maria Schell) , he has to fight two enemies: himself and the medias : a hateful journalist , looking for a scoop , uses the photographs of the hero and Schell's daughter at the fair to sell his gossip paper ;overnight people turn their back (the once maternal landlady who came to comfort him when he is panick -stricken in his nightmares) .The rumor which spreads around town (today think of what the net can do!)can definitively ruin a man's life .
The weakest link of the movie is the hero's job :it remains too vague. But the subject was courageous. And unlike too many of today's movies , it tries to explain why the man became a child molester.
Now out of jail ,the hero looks self-conscious , Stuart Whitman underplays his role,quite rightly so . He knows that his past can resurface. Although he's helped by a psychiatrist (Rod Steiger) and a colleague (Maria Schell) , he has to fight two enemies: himself and the medias : a hateful journalist , looking for a scoop , uses the photographs of the hero and Schell's daughter at the fair to sell his gossip paper ;overnight people turn their back (the once maternal landlady who came to comfort him when he is panick -stricken in his nightmares) .The rumor which spreads around town (today think of what the net can do!)can definitively ruin a man's life .
The weakest link of the movie is the hero's job :it remains too vague. But the subject was courageous. And unlike too many of today's movies , it tries to explain why the man became a child molester.