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Fantastic!

As Good As It Gets

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON is a well thought-of British crime film which adopts a psychological angle to tell an offbeat and well-crafted story. The tale is about a down-and-out couple who are struggling to make ends meet. The lily-livered husband is an asthmatic whose condition sees him constantly out of work. The overbearing wife works as a fraudulent medium to gain money from her clients. Together the pair come up with a sinister scheme to kidnap the daughter of a rich businessman and use the wife's first-hand knowledge of the kidnapping to bring her fame and fortune as a medium.It's a decent story for sure and director Bryan Forbes goes for an intensely realistic approach through. The film is extremely well done when it depicts the psychology of the opposing leads. Kim Stanley is a Lady Macbeth-style control freak undergoing a mental breakdown and her acting is quietly harrowing. Richard Attenborough is the focus of the camera's attention and does very well as the henpecked husband at the mercy of his dominating wife.Sadly, the rest of the film just isn't very exciting. It seems the more a critic likes a film the more I'm likely to hate it. SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON is dreary when it should be exciting and the overlong running time means that there are lots of long stretches when not much really happens. It's a pity as both the opening and closing scenes are sufficiently dramatic, it's just in the middle part that the pace really flags. Compare this to something much more up my street like the similarly-plotted Robert Shaw thriller TOMORROW AT TEN and SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON comes off by far the worse; even the quality acting can't save it.

A bit of a lost classic that slipped between the cracks despite the Oscar nomination for lead actress Kim Stanley, this story of kidnapping and madness in the Savage household starts off with a first hour so expertly paced, nuanced and beautifully photographed that you begin to think the 8.4 score it has on IMDb isn't a stretch at all. The way Forbes handles the exposition, withhelding information from the audience long enough to keep them guessing, releasing them in an ambiguous fashion to maintain an aura of mystery, all the while not forgetting those little casual moments that don't advance the plot but allow the material to breathe and the characters to emerge thridimensional and human instead of drab caricatures drawn as plot devices, is a masterclass in storytelling that one would expect from a master of Bergman's calibre. The second half steadily accelerates, building up tension between the kidnappers and between them and the police, with some absolutely riveting pieces of suspense such as the cat and mouse game in the subway or the mother of the kidnapped girl making a sudden appearance at the house her daughter is being held to participate in a seance where the medium foreshadows her daughter's fate while she remains unaware, right down to the brilliant conclusion around a seance table where stage actor Patrick Magee has a cameo (Mr. Alexander from a CLOCKWORK ORANGE), Seance is a terrific piece of film-making that will particularly appeal to horror fans. Kim Stanley deserved that Oscar and so did Richard Attenborough (who would go on to sweep the Oscars with GANDHI), both of whom give electrifying performances as husband and wife.

Particularly if the medium in question is the clearly raving Myra Savage unhinged by the stillbirth of her only child many years before.She and her husband have a desperate marriage cobbled together by the pretense that the dead child is in fact still alive and living in their creepy old house with them.Wracked with guilt,her husband Billy will do anything to sustain the illusion that theirs is a perfectly normal relationship and that Myra is always right about everything. When she evolves a plan to publicise her "gift" by kidnapping a child for ransom then miraculously divining its whereabouts to an eager world he goes along with it simply to placate her.More by luck than judgement they muddle through until the child becomes seriously ill.......... There are three remarkable performances in this movie.Miss Kim Stanley gives it large as Myra the medium.My goodness me doesn't she act.You can almost see Lee Strasburg standing at her shoulder egging her on. In complete contrast Mr Richard Attenborough is almost an anti-actor. Not always known for his restraint,Mr Attenborough glides silently through the picture with a small grimace here,a nod there,an anguished glance every so often,in the manner of a man who knows he is sure to be hanged quite shortly .And then there's Mr Patrick McGee,surely one of the most menacing of British actors.As the senior detective he is a man who knows only too well human weakness and duplicity.He is cunning,cruel even,but ultimately compassionate as Myra descends into madness before his eyes during her final seance.He is the very epitome of controlled violence,strength and anger contained within his smart overcoat. Much of the credit for this movie must go to Mr Bryan Forbes,director,writer,producer and actor par excellence in British cinema since the early 1950s.He can make "issue" pictures without making an issue of it - if that isn't too contradictory.His masterpiece may well have been the near-contemporary "The L - shaped Room" which earned Miss Leslie Caron an Oscar nomination,but in "Seance on a wet afternoon" he prevents the theatrical Miss Stanley from completely going over the top and coaxes a quiet and subtle performance from his friend Mr Richard Attenborough that he has never bettered. The minutiae of the picture may work better than the whole but it is still a fine example of the output of the British Studios at what has - with hindsight - become recognised as the height of their powers.

The DVD release has an 'extra' in the shape of Bryan Forbes talking about the film in the course of which he takes full credit for 'inventing' the child that died at birth - a revelation withheld until the closing stages; until then Kim Stanley has given the impression that it lived for some years. This raises the interesting speculation that Edward Albee 'stole' this from Forbes for his own highly successful play (which has been revived consistently, unlike Seance) Who's Afraid Of Viginia Woolf, in which, again, a dead male child is referred to throughout the three acts by 'parents' George and Martha until George (again it is the husband that forces the wife to accept the truth) reveals that the child never in fact existed and was a fantasy. Virginia Woolf opened on Broadway in October, 1962, and played in London at the Piccadilly Theatre the following year whilst Seance was released in 1964. In a line from the screenplay the leading lady says '... brightness falls from the air ...'. In 1941 Nigel Balchin published a very fine novel set during the Blitz and entitled Darkness Falls From The Air. Bryan Forbes owned a bookshop for many years in Virginia Water. As for the film itself, seen in 2008, it's fairly ho hum though doubtless finding its audience at the time, never one to be afraid of nepotism Forbes again cast his wife, Nanette Newman, and Richard Attenborough's brother-in-law, Gerald Sim, in supporting roles. Kim Stanley has the flashier role and acquits herself well whilst Dickie tends to phone it in. Interesting as a curio.