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Four Just Men (The) (TV)
R2 - United Kingdom - Network Review written by and copyright: Paul Lewis (11th August 2010). |
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The Show
 The Four Just Men (ITC, Sapphire Films, 1959) Dirs: Anthony Bushell, Basil Dearden, Don Chaffey. Compton Bennett One of the first wave of ITC productions (and arguably the template for many of the ITC-produced globetrotting adventure series that followed in the 1960s), The Four Just Men was loosely grounded in Edgar Wallace’s 1905 novel of the same title, the first novel to feature Wallace’s recurring ‘Just Men’. By the time of the production of this series in 1959, Wallace’s novel had been filmed twice, in 1921 and 1939. Ironically, the 1921 adaptation had featured the first screen performance of Jack Hawkins, who went on to play one of the lead characters, the British MP Ben Manfred, in this series. 
At this stage in ITC’s history, the company was still collaborating with the American production company Sapphire Films (with whom ITC had already collaborated on series such as The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, 1956-7, The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1955-9, and The Buccaneers, 1956-7), and like most of the ITC series The Four Just Men was produced with an eye on the international market. As James Chapman notes in Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s (2002), The Four Just Men’s ‘international ambitions were apparent in its casting’ (20): the titular ‘Just Men’ are Ben Manfred, a British MP based on London; Ricco Poccari (Vittorio de Sica), an Italian hotelier and former member of the Italian Resistance; Tim Collier (Dan Dailey), an American-born journalist who works in Paris; and Jeff Ryder (Richard Conte), a New York lawyer. 
Running for 39 episodes, The Four Just Men opens with an episode ('The Battle of the Bridge') directed by the respected British filmmaker Basil Dearden, who would direct twelve further episodes of the series. Dearden was a filmmaker who in the 1940s and 1950s became strongly associated with the ‘social problem’ film, a movement in British cinema that examined social issues through the gaze of the genre of crime fiction. Dearden’s most well-known contributions to this genre include Violent Playground (1958) and The Blue Lamp (1950), both of which examine the appearance of youth crime in 1940s and 1950s Britain. Chapman notes that Dearden ‘was one of the first established film directors to work in television when he directed episodes of The Four Just Men’ (ibid.: 228), and the series shows some evidence of the influence of the social problem film, with a number of episodes in particular dealing with the fall-out from the Second World War. (Hawkins’ first solo episode, ‘Village of Shame’, finds Manfred traveling to an isolated French village that is still showing the wounds of an incident during the war, in which one of its inhabitants acted as a Nazi collaborator, betraying a number of members of the Resistance.) 
Dearden’s first episode for The Four Just Men, 'The Battle of the Bridge', establishes the foundations of the series, concocting a narrative that focuses on how the 'Just Men' are brought together by Colonel Cyril Bacon (Anthony Bushell, who also directed three episodes of the series). The episode opens with the four men arriving individually at an isolated country house, having each received a telegram inviting them to a mysterious reunion; they recognise one another, having previously met during the war. The house belongs to Colonel Bacon, but the four men soon find their host is absent: Bacon has recently passed away but has left a letter for them, reminding them of their shared past. Via analepsis, we are shown how the group of men met during an Allied mission to blow up a bridge in Italy, thus preventing a platoon of Panzer tanks from reaching the Italian town of Molina and thereby aiding the Italian partisans. It is revealed that Bacon was the officer in charge of the mission, Manfred and Ryder were members of, respectively, the British and American military, and Collier was a war correspondent for an American newspaper. In Italy, the group meet Poccari, a member of the Italian Resistance. When the extended analepsis ends after the successful completion of their misson, the four men are faced with Bacon’s request, presented to them via a letter from Bacon which Manfred reads aloud: 'My four friends. Since that day in Molina, I have kept track of the careers of all of you. Manfred, as a member of parliament for the rights of all men; Poccari, pouring your wealth and energy into a crusade to the underprivileged children of Rome; Collier, in Paris, a foreign correspondent whose pen has become a sword against injustice; Jeff Ryder, in New York – lawyer and guardian of the legal rights of your fellow citizens. To you four, I make a bequest: a substantial sum of money in the Bank of England. It is deposited there in the name of justice. I appeal to you to use it on behalf of justice. Wherever man suffers unjustly, where moral law is ignored, where tyranny rules. Pledge this, one to the other, that as we fought in justice before together, you will continue to fight it each in your own way, in your own place'. 
This opening episode establishes the fight for justice as a perpetual conflict. During the flashback, Ryder asks Poccari, 'You don't have to do this. Why are you here?' Poccari replies by asserting that 'We partisans are fighting for freedom and justice'. To this, Collier adds dryly, 'Justice. I always thought that was a statue they stuck out in front of public buildings, with a blindfold over its eyes'. In response, Ryder jokes, 'Wait until you see how badly the scales are balanced'. Bacon brings this light-hearted banter to a point when he states that, 'To hear you talk, you wouldn't think there was a just man among you. But here you are, risking your lives'. Ryder asserts, 'But we're fighting a war', and Bacon reminds the men that, 'You're always fighting a war, if you're going to worry about justice'. Following ‘The Battle of the Bridge’, each episode of The Four Just Men focuses on an individual member of the ‘Just Men’, with the episodes alternating between Manfred, Ryder, Poccari and Collier. 
The series established the tropes of ITC’s subsequent series which would focus on international troubleshooters (eg, The Saint, 1962-9; Jason King, 1971-2; The Baron, 1972-3), and a very similar premise would be used in the later ITC series The Persuaders!, in which two independently wealthy playboys, the British Brett Sinclair (Roger Moore) and the American Danny Wilde (Tony Curtis), are recruited by Judge Fulton (Laurence Naismith) to fight crime and injustice, specifically targeting criminals who either remain unpunished or whose punishment was too lenient. As James Chapman notes, ‘With its narrative of independently wealthy troubleshooters being brought together by an authority figure […], The Four Just Men belongs to the same generic lineage as Grade’s later (and much more expensive) series The Persuaders!’ (Chapman, 2002: 20). However, as a product of the 1970s, The Persuaders! was a much more reflexive, parodic series, (Interestingly, Dearden’s last works as a director were three episodes of The Persuaders!, including the first episode, ‘Overture’, which has strong echoes of ‘The Battle of the Bridge’.) In Wallace’s original novel, the ‘Just Men’ are borderline villains, conspirators who act as vigilantes in extorting an honest British Cabinet Minister, threatening his life in an attempt to compel him to withdraw a bill that will lead to the extradition of a number of foreign revolutionaries – who face certain death once they return to their home country. Eventually, the ‘Just Men’ reason that murdering the Cabinet Minister is a necessary evil; thus they become political terrorists, the mirror image of Verloc in Joseph Conrad’s contemporaneous novel The Secret Agent (1907). Wallace reworked the ‘Just Men’ in subsequent novels, making them more unambiguously heroic in The Council of Justice (1908) and The Just Men of Cordova (1917). According to Kim Newman (1997), the 1939 film adaptation of The Four Just Men ‘diverg[ed] wildly from the source novel by playing Wallace’s righteous villains as outlaw heroes. Its British fascism (the heroes’ activities include murdering a Member of Parliament whose policies they disagree with) is typical of the megalomaniacal tone that creeps often into Wallace’s work and makes him today an even harder read than the similarly anti-Semitic, anti communist Sapper’ (342). 
This series displays a similarly celebratory depiction of the ‘Just Men’, and as per most 1950s television The Four Just Men displays almost none of the anti-authoritarianism and moral ambiguity that ran as an undercurrent through some of ITC’s stronger 1960s series, such as Danger Man and The Prisoner (1967-8). The approach that The Four Just Men takes to its titular ‘Just Man’ is delineated in the narration that opens each episode, which declares that 'Throughout time, there have been men to who justice has been more important than life itself. From these ranks come four men, prepared to fight valiantly on the side of justice, wherever the need may be. Joined together in this cause, they are “The Four Just Men”'. The end of the series marked ITC owner Lew Grade’s decision to ‘abandon […] the strategy of [international] co-production’, although ITC continued to produce series for the international market (Chapman, op cit.: 20). The Four Just Men also marked ITC’s movement away from ‘swashbucklers’ such as Sir Lancelot, Robin Hood, The Buccaneers and The Adventures of William Tell (1958-9), and towards the brand of action-based espionage dramas that would define ITC’s output during the 1960s and 1970s, including Danger Man (1960-2), The Saint (1962-9) and Man in a Suitcase (1967-8). Disc One: 1. 'The Battle of the Bridge' (24:48) 2. 'The Prime Minister' (24:54) 3. 'Village of Shame' (24:51) 4. 'The Judge' (24:52) 5. 'The Crying Jester' (24:57) 6. 'The Beatniques' (24:55) 7. 'The Deserter' (24:56) 8. 'Dead Man's Switch' (24:53) Gallery (7:43) Disc Two: 9. ‘The Night of the Precious Stones’ (24:51) 10. ‘The Deadly Capsule’ (24:51) 11. ‘Their Man in London’ (24:54) 12. ‘Maya’ (24:54) 13. ‘National Treasure’ (24:58) 14. ‘Panic Button’ (24:55) 15. ‘The Man With the Golden Touch’ (24:59) 16. ‘Marie’ (24:59) Gallery (3:31) Disc Three: 17. ‘The Survivor’ (24:57) 18. ‘The Discovery’ (24:58) 19. ‘The Rietti Group’ (25:01) 20. ‘The Man in the Road’ (24:59) 21. ‘Money to Burn’ (24:57) 22. ‘Crack-Up’ (24:59) 23. ‘The Miracle of St Phillipe’ (24:59) 24. ‘The Slaver’ (24:52) Gallery (2:49) Disc Four: 25. ‘The Princess’ (24:58) 26. ‘The Protector’ (24:55) 27. ‘The Man in the Royal Suite’ (25:00) 28. ‘The Grandmother’ (24:59) 29. ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’ (24:59) 30. ‘The Bystanders’ (25:01) 31. ‘The Godfather’ (25:02) Gallery (03:13) Disc Five: 32. ‘Riot’ (24:59) 33. ‘The Heritage’ (24:51) 34. ‘The Last Days of Nick Pompey’ (24:56) 35. ‘The Moment of Truth’ (24:55) 36. ‘Justice for Gino’ (24:55) 37. ‘The Boy Without a Country’ (24:59) 38. ‘Treviso Dam’ (24:59) Episodic Gallery (2:52) Portrait & PR Gallery (6:01) PDF document: ‘The Four Just Men’ pressbook (27 pages)
Video
Shot on 35mm film, these episodes are well presented here. The first episode has some wear and tear throughout, but don't be put off: from episode two, the monochrome image is crisp and detailed and shows strong contrast, with deep blacks and subtle gradation in the greys. The bulk of episodes are comparable to the quality of Network's releases of other monochrome ITC series: for example, Danger Man. The impressive visual quality of these episodes is perhaps surprising considering how rare they have been. 
The episodes are quite clearly studio-bound; as with many of the 1950s and 1960s ITC series, it's clear that studio sets stand in for the sometimes exotic locations. Many of the episodes feature inserts in the form of stock footage; this is especially noticeable in the first episode. The episodes are presented in their original screen broadcast ratio of 4:3.
Audio
Audio comes in the form of the series' original mono soundtrack, delivered here via a dual channel presentation. Sound is clear and dialogue is never muffled. There are no subtitles.
Extras
Each disc contains a gallery containing production stills relating to the episodes contained on that disc. Disc five also includes a portrait and PR gallery containing ‘behind the scenes’ images of the cast and crew, and some of the images used to promote the series (including the iconic image of the four lead actors positioned at the four points of a giant number ‘4’). Disc five also includes the series’ original pressbook (27 pages), produced by Sapphire Films, as a PDF file. The document contains an overview of the series (which proudly declares that The Four Just Men ‘represents the first time anyone in Britain has attempted to shoot 39 half-hour films in five months’), character profiles, biographies of the four leads and key supporting cast (including Honor Blackman, June Thorburn and Lisa Gastoni), a section entitled ‘Drama of Modern Life’ which attempts to explain the social relevance of the stories (thus once again reinforcing the series’ relationship with the post-war ‘social problem’ film), and biographies of some of the series’ writers, producers and directors.
Overall
The Four Just Men is a strong series that makes good use of its half hour format, although some of the stories are a little imbalanced: for example, the first Collier story (‘The Prime Minister’) spends arguably a little too much time setting up its narrative premise, with the result that the climax is a little too rushed. The four leads are good in their roles, although I would strongly argue that the episodes featuring Hawkins are the best, thanks in large part to Hawkins’ commanding screen presence. The series has a good presentation on this DVD set, with some relevant contextual material. A retrospective examination of the series would have been highly welcome, but what is presented on these discs is more than adequate. The Four Just Men should prove entertaining viewing for fans of ITC’s other output, and considering the cache of the actors in the series, this release may hopefully ensure that The Four Just Men, long absent from television screens and unavailable on home video, acquires a new generation of fans. References: James Chapman, 2002: Saints and Avengers: British Adventure Series of the 1960s. I. B. Tauris Kim Newman, 1997: ‘Wallace, [Richard Horatio] Edgar (1875-1932)’. In: Phil Hardy (ed), 1997: The BFI Companion to Crime. London: Cassell & BFI Publishing: 341-3 For more information, please visit the homepage of Network DVD.
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