Word: fortnum
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...Argentina. They aim to kidnap a visiting American ambassador and hold him against the release of ten political prisoners. But, as one character remarks, "nothing happens as we intend." Acting as his customary farce majeure, Greene has the revolutionaries mistakenly snatch and fruitlessly hold for political ransom poor Charley Fortnum, a gentle, sixtyish, befuddled and more than slightly sodden Englishman who serves as honorary British consul in an upcountry town that boasts only three British passports...
...holder of one of them is Dr. Eduardo Plarr. Plarr's British father has been held for years in a Paraguayan prison, and Plarr has not only become involved with the kidnapers but is the lover of Charley Fortnum's young wife. When Fortnum winds up a hostage, Plarr finds himself in one of those absurd and passionate plights that Greene is so skillful at convincing us are truthful metaphors for man's lot in life. "Let this comedy end as comedy," Plarr says in mock prayer. "None of us are suited for tragedy." But naturally, this...
Risks of Love. Greene readers, accustomed to the fact that nothing succeeds like failure, will soon realize that Charley Fortnum is one of the author's mysteriously blessed innocents. Plarr, a cool diagnostician and a rational man compulsively armed against the risks of love, just as clearly is Greene's familiar man in Gehenna. Convenient labels, though, do not destroy the extraordinary suspense and subtlety of the book...
...very end The Honorary Consul thins and flattens down to a claptrap scene-barely suitable for framing on celluloid-in which Fortnum, Plarr and the kidnapers, led (yes) by a renegade priest named Leon, are beleaguered by police with searchlights and a helicopter. But much of the novel is as finely controlled and exquisitely melancholy as a Mozart symphony...
Virtuoso Stock. Martin's patient is Lord Fortnum (Ralph Richardson), who lives in morbid fear of turning into a bed sitting room. He eventually does, of course. Just the way Penelope's Mum (Mona Washbourne) turns into a dresser and her Dad (Arthur Lowe) into a parrot, while Penelope herself (Rita Tushingham) takes 17 months to give birth to one baby and about 37 seconds to deliver herself of a second. All this goes on while the police (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) fly overhead in a rusted-out patrol car suspended from the end of a helium...