Lord Jim

Brooks' adaptation of Conrad's novel is immeasurably better than its reputation, and a scene towards the end - on a raft in the middle of a fog-bound river as O'Toole's Jim and Mason's Gentleman Brown discuss the age of the world and the price of evil - is an extraordinary attempt to convey Conradian metaphysics. 'Attempt', because Brooks is not entirely successful, with a major structural flaw (as in the novel itself) when the story ends two-thirds of the way through and has to start up again. Nevertheless, the film's pleasures far outweigh its inadequacies: Freddie Young's photography does for the Asian jungles what he did for the desert in Lawrence of Arabia, and the same might be said in praise of O'Toole's all-aquiver, neurotic performance.