Liner Notes: Shooting the Actual Film
THE WHISPERERS & EQUUS “ARE YOU THERE?” output, which includes Whistle Down sult. Take the fact that once the editing The Wind, The L-Shaped Room, stage has been reached those same Bryan Forbes’ 1967 film of The Whis - Séance On A Wet After-noon, King Rat, scenes can be rearranged, clipped, perers (based on the novel by Robert The Wrong Box, Deadfall, The Stepford flipped, optically revised or distorted in a Nicolson) is, sadly, barely remembered Wives, The Slipper and the Rose , thousand different ways: there is literally today. But it contains one of the finest among others, shows a consummate no limit to the number of variations. performances ever committed to cellu - filmmaker who was adept in any num - loid – Dame Edith Evans, who, at the ber of genres. He got superb perform - But the poor composer never enjoys time, was seventy-nine years of age. As ances from his actors, and his visual these luxuries. He comes along quite the New York Daily News said, “Here’s style was always interesting and always late in the day – usually when the film not merely the performance of the year, in service of the story he was telling. has been edited into what is laughingly it is one of the few truly great perform - And The Whisperers looms large in his known as “the rough cut” and is ex - ances by an actress in film history.” body of work. posed to it. In my experience, on these Evans’ performance of an elderly, lonely occasions, the director is more con - woman with a fantasy life, who hears For the score, Forbes used John Barry cerned with pointing out that “it’s all voices (the “whisperers” of the title), – they’d already done several pictures going to be different” than with the com - lives in seedy squalor, and who barely together, including Séance On A Wet poser’s own peculiar problems.” can exist on what she receives from the Afternoon, King Rat , and The Wrong National Assistance, is so haunting and Box .
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