The Whisperers

source: The Whisperers

Somerset Maugham once made this observation about poverty: "You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer." The spirit of what he said pervades this disturbing film. No doubt this work would have to resonate more in Britain, but even 50-years later, unemployment, abandonment of the elderly, and welfare subsistence are fairly universal maladies of the Western World. "The Whisperers" is not a comfortable experience. A disturbed old woman, Mrs Ross (Edith Evans), who lives alone is slowly losing her grip on reality, she lives in impoverished circumstances and is dependent on welfare. When she accidentally comes into a little money, she is preyed on like a wounded animal in the jungle. Even her son, Charlie (Ronald Fraser), and her estranged husband, Archie (Eric Portman), take advantage of her. This is more than a performance by Edith Evans; when it's over, you believe Mrs Ross existed. She lives in a society where ruthless opportunists abound. However, the story is not devoid of decent people; her young neighbour and especially the understanding Mr Conrad (Gerald Sim) at the welfare office redeem what would be a very jaundiced look at modern life. Bryan Forbes was a man of many talents: actor, writer and director, but this film would have to be at the pinnacle of his achievements. The film boasts brilliant photography and real locations. You can almost smell the rising damp and cheap tobacco, and feel the mud spattered on your shoes - not to mention the edge of the cut-throat razors in one disturbing scene; powerful imagery in the impressive tradition of British 'kitchen sink dramas'. The film has a score by John Barry. Although I didn't see this film until 50 years after it was made, I knew the theme far earlier from a Barry compilation album, and always wanted to see the film it went with. This was before Barry settled into that languid style when many of his scores seemed interchangeable. During the 60's and 70's he was one of the most experimental composers. He used a harpsichord here in a small-scale work, which suited the poignancy and bleakness of the story. Although dramatised, the film shows a slice of modern life, but from a rather dispassionate point-of-view and that makes it hit home all the more.

DAME Edith Evans is superb in this, as she was in all her roles, but never better than this, playing a delusional, paranoid senior who hear voices. This film is a crowning glory to an extremely long and distinguished career. It's a great role for a great actress.She displayed not only keen emotional acting but she also showed us what physical acting is all about with her appropriate body moves and facial manipulations. I think this was her only Academy Award nominated role for Best Actress, but she won many other awards for this excellent performance. I miss her portrayals even today. She often played roles in films of the works of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Her place in British cinema is perhaps handed down to the likes of Julie Christie, or Cate Blanchett, but only time will tell if their careers can span the length of time that Evans' did. Buddy

Dame Edith Evans wonderfully protrays a fragile human being at the end of her life. What you will come away with from this movie other than the beauty of her performance, is the base nature of most human beings. It is the perfect film for a psych student and is as relevant today as it was then. Human beings haven't changed--if anything, they are more so! What makes us tick is basic selfishness, ego and lust. We seldom truly love another person even when we think we do. Everything we build is for ourselves. All lovers of Ronald Reagan ought to be strapped in their seats for this one! They'll love seeing themselves. If you have longed to believe in the human race, DON'T see this film!! If the truth about us is too hard to take, DON'T see this film. If you feel you are a good person, DON'T see this film! It doesn't pretend to represent anything, it just is. If you think humanity is worth saving, SEE this film! Personally, I pray for global warming. We're just no damn good. We muck up everything and then complain about it.

'The Whisperers' (1967) is understated dark majesty. The supremely versatile film-maker Bryan Forbes directs a remarkably bleak and eerily unsettling treatise on the multifarious cruelties inherent with old age. 'The Whisperers' (1967) is an extraordinarily persuasive work of macabre cinema that has lost none of its considerable power to enthral and perturb with equally forceful rigor. I have long been an avid fan of Forbes's sublime cinema, and I still passionately feel that 'The Whisperers' remains one of his very finest films. One must absolutely mention the extraordinary Edith Evans who is completely mesmerizing, and surely delivers one of cinema's most genuinely affecting performances here; and it is tantamount to a cultural travesty that this masterpiece has been allowed to mildew away in entirely unwarranted obscurity. Forbes's 'The Whisperers' along with his equally unsettling, chill-inducing existential nightmare 'Séance on a wet afternoon' are arguably two of the most rewarding works of darkly immersive melodrama produced within the UK's tremendously exciting cinematic Renaissance of the 1960s. (Hopefully some tasteful, forward-thinking label might soon release this fine film on a fully restored features-packed Blu-ray!)

Another middle of the road film: not good, not bad. It's just more or less the viewing or peering into a few days of a life of a sad, half crazy little old lady. She sees things and likes to fantasize about being rich. And yes she discovers lots of money her son stole, now believing her fantasy's will come true. It does have some great scenes of her and sometimes really good cinematography but that's really about it. It's a story with no real focus, no real direction - it just is. Seems to be a bit of an artsy piece and that's about it. Minus all the money she find, I think this is me in a few more years... a sad, lonely, half-crazy, poor little old lady living alone. Maybe that is the point of the film - don't end up this way, instead find lots of money to be happy at least(?)! lol. 5/10

First off, I want to say that I am drawn to movies that have, at their core, a genuine feeling of sadness for humanity. It's not so much that these films offer a pessimistic view of the world - although, I guess you can label it that way - as they just seem to have a clear understanding of the horribly awful things we often do to one another. Shot in black and white, in perpetually fogged out/drizzly England, this story of one older woman's loneliness and dementia tinged world is about 5 steps down into the dungeon of depressing. It offers a kind of sad relief - the kind that comes from knowing that, although things are terrible, they could be much, much worse. I've always been one to not quite understand the desire for a "feel good" movie. All movies, if they work as they should, will leave you feeling better for having seen them - whether silly or serious. This is one of those films.

Set amidst squalid Manchester backgrounds, an elderly British woman who lives alone and gets by on scraps is robbed and left for dead; she recovers in the hospital, and is eventually reunited with the husband who ran off and left her some years prior. Director Bryan Forbes, who also adapted his screenplay from the novel by Robert Nicolson, builds this material very slowly and steadily--but with no light relief or sense of recovery from its depressing milieu, the film doesn't seem to have a course to follow (the sequences just turn into incidents). Oscar-nominated Edith Evans, a marvelous actress who can do as much for a scene with no dialogue as some actors can with a soliloquy, works her aged vulnerability to its proper advantage. However, when the character returns home from her tragedy (rendered nearly mute by her experiences), she loses all her quirky personality. Similarly, Forbes (as the director) seems not to know where he is in the final quarter, and as the writer allows his narrative to slip away in little drabs. Well-enough made, but the general air of gloom and decay robs the picture of promise. There's no moral here (perhaps on purpose), and no point, either. ** from ****

This grim tale about the loneliness and vulnerability of old age, set in what must be the most rundown section of Manchester, manages to touch us in an unsentimental manner. Its chief quality is the crisply photographed slum in which it largely takes place, like the last remains of the 19th century surviving into the post-War 20th. The protagonist, Margaret Ross, played by the stately Edith Evans, lives in a cluttered ground floor flat in this urban wasteland of rain-slicked cobblestone streets without cars or pedestrians, but an abundance of crumbling brick walls, gutted buildings and stray cats. The opening credit sequence of grey rooftops under rainy skies is particularly striking. At home she looks through newspapers, eats bread with honey, sips tea and listens to radio as her sink faucet drips, drips, drips. She constantly hears voices (the "whisperers" of the title) and turns up the radio to drown them out. When the upstairs neighbors, an interracial couple with an infant, pound on the floor in protest, she pounds back on the ceiling with a broomstick and is showered with bits of plaster. (We see the bald patch from where the plaster has fallen but the absence of other patches means that she has never before banged on the ceiling; this strand of the story would have been more convincing if more of the ceiling was similarly defaced.) When not talking to the imagined voices, she spends her solitary life visiting the library where she surreptitiously warms her feet on the heating pipes, collecting welfare from a local government office where she makes frequent references to her good breeding and high-class family connections, listening to sermons at a local evangelical storefront chapel, and tending to household chores which seem to consist mostly of emptying large quantities of dust, coal ashes and bottles and cans from which she derives most of her nourishment. Evans brings dignity to the role but somehow she does not seem to be the right actress for the part. Margaret Ross is a woman of humble origins. Evans is a thoroughbred. True, she does claim that she married beneath herself, but that would be putting it mildly. Still, she has the acting skills to keep us entertained, and she gets brilliant support from the secondary players: Eric Portman as her surly husband, Avis Bunnage as a predatory welfare mom and Gerald Sim as a welfare clerk add a great deal to the overall presentation. Leonard Rossiter, too, shows up for a strong few minutes as a government official. And John Barry supplies a melancholy but unobtrusive musical score. Evans got an Oscar nomination for this performance. Fair enough. But I think Gerry Turpin should have also gotten one for his beautiful cinematography.

This movie was indeed well-acted, but I found it too slow moving and depressing to possibly recommend to anyone other than acting students. It just didn't hold my interest. I wasn't compelled to care about what happened to the main character. It's a carefully crafted view of an old woman's life. Realistic in her perspective as well as the perspective of others with whom she interacts. It's interesting that a review must be at least 10 lines in order to be accepted as a legitimate review. So much for focusing on brevity and quality of content rather than quantity of text. Seems quite silly actually.