14 Days of Paranoia #10: The Brotherhood of the Bell (dir by Paul Wendkos)

First aired on television in 1970, The Brotherhood of the Bell tells the story of Andrew Patterson (Glenn Ford).

Andrew Patterson is a widely respected economics professor. He is an influential academic, one who has a nice house, a beautiful wife (Rosemary Forsyth), and a father-in-law (Maurice Evans) who owns a very successful business. Patterson is also a member the Brotherhood of the Bell, a secret society made up of successful men who all graduated from the prestigious College of St. George in San Francisco. Patterson has been a member of the society for 22 years and he’s never really taken it that seriously. He thinks of it as just being a collection of influential men who enjoy getting together and discussing their vision for the world.

That all changes when the man who brought Andrew to the Society, Chad Harmon (Dean Jagger), gives Andrew an assignment. The Society wants him to deliver an envelope to his friend, Dr. Konstantin Horvathy (Eduard Franz). Horvathy is up for a deanship that another member of the Society desires for himself. Inside the envelope is damaging information that the Society has gathered about the people who helped Horvathy defect to the United States, information that will be made public unless Horvathy withdraws as a candidate. Reluctantly, Andrew shows Horvathy the envelope. Horvathy responds by committing suicide.

Stricken with guilt, Andrew decides to expose the existence of the Society but he discovers that won’t be easy. Almost overnight, Andrew’s perfect life starts to collapse. He loses his job. The IRS launches an investigation of his father (Will Geer). As Chad explains it, the Society is responsible for everything that Andrew has and, therefore, the Society can take everything away. When Andrew goes public, he’s dismissed as just being paranoid and soon, Andrew truly is paranoid. With his marriage in ruins, Andrew goes on a talk show and can only watch helplessly as his claims are dismissed by the host (William Conrad) and as the audience argues about whether or not the Society is a white plot, a communist plot, a Jewish plot, a Catholic plot, or a government plot. Even the people who believe Andrew are too busy fighting amongst themselves to provide any help for him or to stand up to the unified power of the Brotherhood. The host repeatedly rings a bell during the show, the better to mock everyone’s fears. The film makes a good point. Crazed theorists are often a conspiracy’s best friend.

An intelligently written and well-acted film, The Brotherhood of the Bell‘s main strength is the direction of Paul Wendkos. The lighting gets darker and the camera angles become increasingly more skewed as Andrew’s paranoia grows. In fact, Wendkos does such a good job of visualizing Andrew’s deteriorating mental state that it’s easy to wonder if maybe everyone is right and all of this really is just happening in Andrew’s head. Though the film ends on a slightly triumphant note, it’s hard not to feel that it’s a temporary victory at best. The Brotherhood of the Bell (which I imagine was based on Yales’s Skull and Crossbones) will always be there.

14 Days of Paranoia: