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A Masterpiece!

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

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

The super-talented film-maker Bryan Forbes directs a very eerie treatise on the various cruelties inherent with old age. 'The Whisperers' is an extremely powerful work of eerie cinema that has lost none of the power to enthrall and perturb in equal measures; I have long been a fan of Forbes's work, and I still feel that'The Whisperers' remains one of his very best films. One must mention Edith Evans who is completely mesmerizing, and surely delivers one of cinema's most genuinely affecting performances here; and it is a cultural travesty that this masterpiece has been allowed to mildew away in entirely unwarranted obscurity. (someone release this fine film now!) Forbes's 'The Whisperers' along with his equally unsettling 'Seance on a wet afternoon' are arguably two of the most rewarding works of dark melodrama produced within the UK's cinematic Renaissance of the 1960's.

What a treat that this amazing classic has been released on DVD at last. It came out in 2010 as one of the initial trial batch of unjustly ignored old MGM-owned titles (it was a Lopert Production) which have been released as MGM Limited Edition titles by the CreateSpace division of American Amazon (not yet available in Britain despite being a British film). (The other most important title issued at the same time is Sidney Lumet's THE GROUP.) Every serious student of acting should order this film immediately in order to study the mind-blowing performance of Dame Edith Evans as the lead character, Margaret Ross, aged 76. Edith Evans herself was the antithesis of this character, but she throws her own personality overboard and drowns it dead as a dodo, to transform herself as if by magic into this person. Rarely has a screen impersonation been so complete that one feels it goes down not just to the bone but to the marrow. To say that Edith Evans (1888-1976) could act the socks off all comers is an understatement, one only has to admit simply that when it comes to mastery of her profession, no one can touch her. She was a genius. It is astonishing that she did not receive an Oscar for this film, although she was nominated for one but she did receive the 1968 BAFTA award for it, as well as the Golden Globe in America, the New York Film Critics Circle Award (an award which was at its most prestigious in the 1960s), and the Berlin Silver Bear Best Actress award. So at least she did not go unappreciated at the time, though the film has tended to be forgotten since. The film was written and directed by Bryan Forbes, and inevitably has his wife Nanette Newman in it in a small part. Forbes is not normally noted as one of the giants of the cinema, but in this instance he really delivered. Only three years earlier he had drearily depressed everyone with a very boring film, SÉANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON (1964), which was also shot by Gerry Turpin, who was the cinematographer on this. Turpin's black and white lighting camera work is so spectacular in this film that it also should have won an Oscar. It is absolutely inspired. Various old timers deliver fine supporting performances in the film, chiefly Eric Portman as Evans's callous drunken husband whom she has not seen for twenty years, but also Gerald Sim as a welfare officer and Ronnie Fraser as Evans's ne'er-do-well son, and there is a hair-raising performance as a wicked scheming woman by Avis Bunnage. The story and main character are pathetic in the extreme. The film is largely a poignant study of the extreme loneliness, isolation, and cruel victimisation of the elderly. Goodness knows where Forbes got this idea from, but it seems deeply personal somehow. Did he have a great-aunt like this, one wonders. The film is far from cheerful. It is bleak and disturbing, and tells the kind of story which is often called 'deeply human'. It is sad and also frankly heart-breaking because of the pathos aroused by Evans's portrayal of the woman. The film is set up north somewhere, but evidently not very far north, for Manchester is mentioned in the credits. It seems that the vast stretches of desolation, the hundreds of acres of demolished terrace houses, and the eerie emptiness of the strange place where Evans lives in a flat on the ground floor of a crumbling house must have been Manchester as it was being demolished in 1966 to make way for the new high-rise buildings. What was once a depressing two-dimensional world was transformed into an even more depressing three-dimensional world in the sky, but we do not see the future results of all the devastation in this film, we merely see the flattened beginnings of it. It looks as if the whole city has been bombed by the Nazis, but in this case the Nazis appear to have had large relentless treads and gone under the name of bulldozers. I suppose the desolation of the setting was meant to evoke the desolation of Evan's loneliness. So there is plenty to be depressed about, if you are that way inclined. The story is a simple one in its way. Evans is an abandoned old lady who hears voices ('the whisperers') and talks to invisible presences. But at other times, she has her dignity and speaks in what is known in England as 'a good voice', which ruffles the feathers of all the lower orders no end. It seems that she was the daughter of a bishop who married a chauffeur and came down in the world. As she puts it in a voice over, 'I married beneath me'. We see some flashbacks of her as a child on the stairs watching the grownups at a grand party in the bishop's palace. Her pretensions of being a bishop's daughter are derided by a civil servant, who claims she was just a cleaning woman in a bishop's palace once. But in that case, how did she come by her infallibly upper class manners and accent, which are not an affectation? What is so astonishing about Evans is the way she throws herself into every word and every mood as if she were a World Champion diver, never missing a twirl of her personality as she plunges into the abyss of otherness. This really is something, it really really is. (Did I say too many really's?) It's the real thing all right.

There are many goo reasons to watch this gritty, incredibly depressing and yet rewarding film, but the biggest thrill for me was the unexpected cameo by Leonard Rossiter. As someone who watched "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin" as a young teen (which had a huge impact on me) and who thinks Leonard was a one-of-a-kind actor, one of those rare performers who is so unique he cannot be imitated or duplicated, any glimpse of him performing different kinds of roles is always a treat to come across. It's great to see him playing a bit part here, completely convincing (as always) and without a hint of humor, again showing he was just an incredible actor first, who later became known for being a truly exceptional comedic performer with such characters as Rigsby the landlord in Rising Damp. If you are a fan, it's great to get a glimpse of him from 1967.

Dame Edith Evans, one of the British theater's greatest actresses of the first half of the twentieth century, gives a brilliant performance as a lonely old lady existing in seedy rented rooms in a grimy industrial town while scraping by on National Assistance. This film should be shown to everyone on their first day of work, before they fill out their tax deferred pension withholdings. If ever there was a good lesson for putting something away for one's old age, it is this film. It is a horror story of "This is what's going to happen to you if you don't start putting something aside for your old age."Mrs. Ross lives alone in poverty despite a family of sorts, a work-shy husband who deserted her and a son who only comes by to hide stolen loot while pretending to visit. Her rooms are a disorderly clutter of books, old newspapers, glass bottles and anything she doesn't want to throw away. Her endless days are filled with visits to the local library reading room, to keep warm; the local mission church; the police station, to complain about the neighbors; and the social security office, to beg for more public assistance; which is doled out a few shillings at a time. To escape this grim reality Mrs. Ross builds a fantasy world not unlike Luis in "Kiss of the Spider Woman". She exists in her fantasy of a privileged upbringing as the daughter of a Bishop, living in a palace, and watching the white gloved dancers at a ball. She awaits the settling of her fantasy father's estate and the fortune from the family cattle business. When she finds stolen money hidden by her shiftless son during a quick visit, she believes that her ship has finally come home and her fantasies are reality. It is not long before the vulnerable old lady is "befriended" and robbed by a steely eyed con woman, and dumped in an alley near her home. Although the welfare people do all they can to get her back on her feet and her husband to take care of her, by the film's end she has come full circle and has resumed her daily routine and her fantasy world.Dame Edith, who was the original "St. Joan" on stage in the 1920's, and for whom Shaw wrote "The Millionairess" is rarely off the screen and gives a faultless performance in what could otherwise be a very depressing film about poverty and loneliness. Where at first you sympathise with the old lady who has come down in the world and is now living in genteel poverty, you come to understand that she never went up in the first place, the only genteel world she ever inhabited was in her mind, and that is where she now resides.As for an acting tour de force, just watching the way Dame Edith conveys the lowly origins of Mrs. Ross without words, as in the way she eats - out of tins - lifting large slices of bread to her mouth (where they fall apart) rather than cutting the slice to small manageable portions, licking her fingers, reading at the table - all the things considered to be bad manners. The way she conveys old tired poverty, by slipping off her shoes in the library to warm her feet on the hot pipes, is a lesson in technique that all aspiring actors should take note of. You know as you watch her slowly make her way down the cobbled streets carrying her large tote bag that this pathetic old lady is a prime target for a mugging, or a slip and fall. I would recommend this film to anyone who wants to study great acting and to those who are concerned with the plight of the elderly.