MovieChat Forums > Hunted (1952) Discussion > Ending Could Have Been Better....Spoiler

Ending Could Have Been Better....Spoiler


Just watched this movie for the first time and was disappointed with the ending.

I guess for Dirk Bogarde there could only have been one ending. Jail....with perhaps a lighter sentence for bringing the boy back when he was sick, but in those days I dont think they took those things into consideration.

For the boy......hopefully a better future, but again in the early 50s I dont think children were looked at in the same light as today. As long as they had a roof over their heads, the authorities seemed to shut their eyes to abuse.

I guess I like movies to have happy endings, but I felt left up in the air.

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[deleted]

In those days (1951), Dirk's character would have been hanged for murder when he was caught, tried and convicted. He could have got away to Ireland, but, in a selfless act, he traded his own life for Robbie's, so that the little boy would live. The fate of Robbie would be uncertain, but my guess is that he wouldn't have been sent back to London and would have been re-fostered with another couple in Scotland.

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[deleted]

A Catholic orphanage... given the recent exposure of the nasty things which happened to little boys inside their walls, the term "decent orphanage" is a subjective and controversial one. He'd likely to end up publishing his story as something similar to "Song for a Raggy Boy" or "The Boys of Saint Vincent" given the situation and his obvious vulnerability. I admire your optimism, but it's a far cry from the reality of this cruel world in those times.

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Quite true about Catholic orphanages. Because his mother had died and his father was away in France fighting in the First World War, my father was admitted to St. Edmund's Home, a Roman Catholic orphanage at Bebington in Cheshire on October 9th, 1915, when he was five years old. This home was closed and demolished in 1983, but records of admissions and discharges still kept by the Diocese of Shrewsbury show that he was discharged from St. Edmund's on July 17th, 1920, aged nearly ten. He had an awful time at St Edmunds and was viciously flogged on his back with a cat o’nine tails by the Roman Catholic nuns who ran the home. To his dying day, he bore the scars on his back where open wounds had not been given any treatment except salt that was rubbed into them, which caused him excruciating pain. This must have been a terrible experience for him and one guaranteed to put anyone off the Roman Catholic religion for life, which it did for him.

I also heard a terrible story about the nuns who ran St Mary’s Orphanage in Walthamstow, east London, in the 1950s, where the head nun would take young boys separately into her office, put her hand down the front of the boy’s pants and play with him. If he got sexually aroused, she would beat him violently with a cricket bat, screaming at him that he was a horrid, filthy boy and belonged to the devil. What a terribly twisted mind she must have had!

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[deleted]

Yes, I should have phrased my post differently at the beginning and for that I apologise. I should have typed that this applied to some catholic orphanages, but not all.

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