When I first saw this movie I remember James Mason's being revealed as a child molester and him defending himself was a much longer scene. Eveyones reveal about their hidden past was much more involved but his was hardly mentioned do you think it was cut out?
shareThe one aired on TCM tonight didn't mention anything about it other than when someone made a jab of how he made child molester jokes. But, I was waiting for an explanation about that one, and never got it. It is possible that they cut it out.
shareI saw the film in the theatre, and no such scene was originally shown or later cut. Possibly, there's more of the character's defense in the novelization?
shareThere's a novel?
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I hope so because, while I loved the movie overall, this was the most glaringly unrealistic part of the whole movie for me. I didn't at all like how Philip wasn't all that bothered by being accused of being a child molester. I mean, seriously, they made it out to be that a hit-and-run killer was way worse than being a child molester. Sure, the former is terrible too, but if it was an accident and the person just panicked, most people can understand. The latter? No way. I think it should have accused him of something else or made it a joke that he wasn't a child molester, just that people only joked about it because he worked so often with kids or something. Just having himself defend himself some more, as you suggest it may have once been, would have made that so much better.
shareThat's true what you say, I do remember a lot more was said about it.
shareSPOILER
Clinton Green (James Coburn) put everybody at a party in a picture and his wife Sheila's name was on the wall. Everybody was placed under a letter in the word SHEILA. Later that evening Sheila, a gossip columnist, is run over.
A year later Clinton devises a gossip game with his friends while on vacation on his yacht. Each letter in SHEILA corresponded to a typed card containing a real secret about the person. The letter "H" was changed from "Hit-and-Run Killer" to "Homosexual" and "L" was changed to "Little Child Molester". Philip Dexter (James Mason) shrugs off the charge, saying the clue made no sense. ("Little - as opposed to BIG Child Molester?"). It later turns out somebody destroyed two of the cards and changed their text to draw off suspicion from Sheila's killer.
SPOILERS
Just for reasons of accuracy, I have to point out a few facts you have wrong:
1. Sheila was killed BEFORE the opening credits even appeared. There was no pic taken of the players against a wall. They weren't even shown as being there.
2. The players were photographed against the name SHEILA on the side of the yacht, a year after Sheila was killed.
3. The card was never changed to HOMOSEXUAL. That's how Alice knew there was more to the game than met the eye. Secrets would be revealed.
4. The Hit-and Run card was the only one that was changed. From ALCOHOLIC, which is when TOM knew there was more to the game...secrets would be revealed. He's the one who changed the card, not realizing that everyone was posed under a letter and the 'H' wouldn't fit.
Assuming that there aren't any cut scenes dwelling on the child molester allegations against Masons character then a possible thought that might have guided the writers and director in the light treatment of such a serious accusation is that the accusation can be left as an in-joke or meta-joke: Mason's most notorious role was as pedophile Humbert Humbert. That is, as the most famous pedophile in all of literature, in Kubrick's film of Nabokov's Lolita.
shareI thought the same thing. This is the only explanation that makes sense. Mason as Humbert Humbert, a meta joke.
sharethat was the weakest part of the movie.
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