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In 1967 Edith Evans was Oscar nominated for her role in the Bryan Forbes film The Whisperers. Although she lost out to Katherine Hepburn, Evans’ performance as Mrs Ross, the tired old lady lost in a world driven by the evils of money, is easily her best performance on film.

Although The Whisperers boasts an excellent John Barry soundtrack, it sits far away from the usual Barry fare of stylish spy thrillers typical of the decade. Barry’s long partnership with Forbes (which included the similarly moody Seance on a Wet Afternoon) allowed him to compose for a different view of the 60s, one shot in stark black and white where the poor struggled on a meagre existence. Forbes depicts this in the early scenes of The Whisperers; a cold and miserable winter, the library full of the old as they huddle against the warm pipes, the needy shuffling along a line at the social services.

Evans (who was nearing eighty at the time) is superb as Mrs Ross, slipping into dementia and believing both that she is watched by unseen guests in her room, the whisperers concealed within a dripping tap or behind the wall, and that she will soon receive the estate of her long dead father. Reality swirls around her, the young couple living above (who include Nanette Newman as the girl upstairs), an officious but kindly civil servant (Gerald Sim) and her wayward son Charlie (Ronald Fraser). Charlie sets the events of The Whisperers into motion, arriving unannounced and hiding a mysterious parcel in her flat. Although he only makes a fleeting appearance, Fraser gives his usual excellent performance, here instantly seedy, untrustworthy, trouble. Mrs Ross later receives a visit from a nosey social worker (Kenneth Griffith, another brief but excellent performance), which leads her to finding Charlie’s parcel – stolen money which she believes to be her inheritance.

The Whisperers has dated in how far a pound will go (at one point Mrs Ross loses a pound note and it is reported to the police), but is nevertheless still effective in showing how far the desperate might go to get their hands on the smallest of fortunes. Mrs Ross is plied with drinks by an unscrupulous woman and left unconscious by the side of the road by her husband (the fine character actor Michael Robbins from On the Buses). All for ten pounds. Miraculously, she survives the ordeal and another social worker (Leonard Rossiter – the brilliant cameos come thick and fast) tracks down her estranged (and, for the purposes of the plot, ten years younger) husband Archie. Archie Ross is more dream casting in the great Eric Portman, who portrays him with just the right mixture of resigned failure and last ditch ambition. Archie’s dream for the quick quid lead him, just like many of the others in The Whisperers, straight into oblivion.

Bryan Forbes has crafted an outstanding film that contrasts a dreamy mood piece personified by the hazy world of Mrs Ross with one that depicts a very sleazy picture of the 1960s. It’s a familiar one; dreary betting shops, petty gangsters in flashy cars and a craze of unrestrained and ruthless demolition serving as a backdrop (one of my favourite scenes is of Archie, working as a part time driver for a criminal gang, waiting by a demolished wasteland where only a small, single public house remains). The Whisperers was filmed at Pinewood Studios and on location in Oldham, Greater Manchester. Like Seance on a Wet Afternoon it makes excellent use of location resulting in, whether intended or not, a curious and fascinating period piece.

Unfortunately The Whisperers is not currently available on DVD, although it does feature in tv schedules from time to time and is well worth investigating for its cast of fantastic actors, of course for Edith Evans but especially for Eric Portman. And also to see the side of the sixties not often portrayed so desperately on film at the time; one that didn’t swing and didn’t revolve around a chosen London few.

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Mesrine was released in UK cinemas in 2009 and is now available on DVD. This four hour biopic of the French criminal Jacques Mesrine is divided into two parts, Killer Instinct and Public Enemy Number One. Roughly, the films cover Mesrine’s life in the 1960s and 1970s respectively and while both do differ in tone it is highly recommended that they are viewed in quick succession. Indeed, I found Mesrine so superb that I think this would be difficult to avoid. Vincent Cassel is excellent in the title role; mesmerising, frightening, sickly charming and most importantly believable as a ruthless – well, bank robber, gangster, political activist, kidnapper, cold blooded killer. Take your pick.

Beginning in 1959, when the young Mesrine was a soldier in Algiers, the films follow him until his death in 1979. I’m not giving anything away here; Killer Instinct begins at the end as it were – in 1979, where Mesrine is followed by police and assassinated in the streets of Paris. It’s an incredible opening, extremely tense, and adds much to the effect of the end of Public Enemy Number One, when these events are chillingly replayed. The opening of Killer Instinct also hints at Cassel’s ability to play a man who ages two decades; he manages to convey both the physical and behavioural changes that happen over this time.

Killer Instinct charts Mesrine’s blossoming life of crime, beginning with his early rebellion against the constraints of his middle class family, to involvement with criminal lowlife and association with a powerful crime boss (a fine cameo from Gerard Depardieu). Mesrine’s relationships with others play very heavily throughout the two films. As the soldier in Algiers, we see him forced to execute a woman who is one of a group of prisoners. Hesitating, he kills her brother instead – an early sign of his insurgency and of his attitude to women. One that’s open to interpretation. Later, when his wife questions his growing association with the underworld, he lashes out and puts a gun to her head. It’s difficult to determine if this is purely bravado in front of his friends or something much deeper. Throughout the two films Mesrine finds it hard to differentiate between prostitutes and partners; he often confuses the two. If I had one criticism it would be that his relationship with his daughter, who is only glimpsed briefly, is never fully explored. But maybe in reality her presence in his life was only this fleeting.

Public Enemy Number One catches up with Mesrine as France’s most notorious and wanted criminal, escaping from countless prisons, fleeing from one courtroom with a hostage judge and charming the jury of another, almost a Robin Hood figure although the film is smart enough to gently remind that this isn’t really true. In one section, he forces a family to smuggle him away in the boot of their car after he has burgled a casino (he’s had the audacity to pose as a policeman to do this – audacity is what made him so successful for so long; in another scene he insists that the detective arresting him share a bottle of champagne). Towards the end of Public Enemy Number One he is shown violently abusing a journalist who has had the temerity to crriticise him in an article. Like all folklore villains, Mesrine reveals that his own selfish interests lie at his heart; he may be ostensibly charming but overstep the line and you are in trouble. And remember, it’s not “Mez-rine” it’s “Merrine”. He was very touchy about the pronunciation.

Cassel is a fascinating actor to watch, although by no stretch of the imagination handsome. Where Killer Instinct accustoms the viewer to his – let’s be kind here – distinctive features, rather large of nose and thickly moustached. the second film shows Mesrine as the master of disguise he became in a life on the run. A variety of wigs and beards ensue which again lead neatly to the assassination scene (where Mesrine is fashioned with a goatee and thick curly hair). Thankfully, the films don’t overdose on period detail in a way that, perhaps, Martin Scorsese would do, and the only excess I noted was Mesrine’s brief tenure in London shortly before his death where the soundtrack plays London Calling by The Clash and we’re shown amiable bobbies in Hyde Park. But mostly it refrains from romanticising the period 1959 to 1979.

Although highly watchable, Mesrine is by no means an original film. It unashamedly takes elements from The Godfather, Escape From Alcatraz, Papillon, Goodfellas and countless other memorable examples of the crime genre. At times it looks like it’s going to lurch into cliché but somehow always manages to remain interesting. One example of this is Mesrine’s time in a high security jail. His period in solitary confiement, stripped of all dignity, will be familiar to moviegoers, as is the archetypal exercise yard scene. This is where the lead actor, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Tim Robbins or in this case Cassel, step out into the bright sunshine of the prison exercise yard. Inmates wear denim shirts. Some play basketball, while others huddle around making deals or squaring up to one another. At least one is huge, bald and bearded. Wardens watch from high towers, training their sights on troublemakers. Mesrine plays to all of these cliches but somehow manages to make this fresh and exciting. The scene where he escapes armed only with a pair of wire cutters is one of the most exciting in recent cinema, as is the section where he attempts an ill-judged rescue attempt for inmates in the same prison.

I don’t feel sorry for Mesrine, although the film concludes with an interesting point and one made by the criminal himself. So smart, so fearless and so able to evade capture, the only choice for the establishment was to gun him down. Somehow this is unjust, that the authorities gave up attempting to catch and imprison him and took the easy option, were cowardly and cheated. And Public Enemy Number One ends with the impression that the police were well aware of this failure, and would have to always live with it.

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The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris was almost a novel I passed on. I had mixed feelings about And Then we Came to the End which, although revealing some excellent writing, was ultimately an overlong and slightly messy book. But I was swept up in the tide of eager anticipation that came with Ferris’ latest, and some comparisons to McCarthy and Beckett had me reversing my decision and placing my order.

I’m glad I did. The Unnamed is the best novel I’ve read this year. It’s possibly the best novel I’ve read since The Road. It’s a book that somehow evades evaluation by me on the page; I find it difficult to articulate what I liked and admired about it, also hard to explain what the novel is about. Ferris has matured as a writer immensely, and has delivered something that surprises in its depth and insight when compared to his previous work.

If I was forced to outline The Unnamed? It features an American lawyer with a young family who battles a compulsion to wander. The urge to cover long distances in an often inhospitable landscape takes over; he leaves home and wakes up in a succession of remote and unattractive settings. Cold, filthy and often in danger, he call his wife. She brings him home, but the safety of the home only reminds of what his uncontrollable urges will force him to abandon. His condition avoids any diagnosis; briefly he agrees to wear a contraption that will monitor the functioning of his brain, although this fails to provide a solution to the doctor he increasingly loses faith in. His wife resorts to the more desperate strategy of chaining him to a bed. As the urge to walk begins to take over his existence, working life sees the crumbling of a case where an apparently innocent man is imprisoned for murder. His wife descends into alcoholism, finding isolated bars to drink in anonymity.

At times The Unnamed appears as Man’s migratory spirit writ large, and the later chapters are painful as the wandering dominates, forcing us across an increasingly bleak landscape. At times it suggests more than it is willing to explore; a desperately bleak winter, floods, scorching summers and mysteriously dead bees are almost apocalyptic – not as fully fledged as The Road but almost a precursor to it. It is a novel I recommend highly; bold, daring and original.

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