The Book Tower

Who is this who is coming?

Every Christmas I revert to habit and immerse myself in M.R. James. A recent bout of insomnia found me watching this television version of the short story Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad during the quiet and cold early hours. Filmed in 1968 for the BBC, it was directed by Jonathan Miller and stars Michael Hordern. A masterpiece of atmosphere, this is one of the best James adaptations ever; Hordern is excellent and the tale is genuinely creepy and unsettling.

Hordern plays Parkin, an eccentric academic, the kind of role he was born to play. Muttering to himself and breaking into half chanted songs, he is a distant and introverted figure who rolls up to stay at a guest house in Norfolk for a short holiday. He tends to shun the company of the other guests, walking alone on the beach during the day and sitting on his own at dinner. Whilst other guests are content to holiday around the golf course, Parkin prefers solitary walks along deserted beaches with only his muttering for company. During one of his outings he discovers a forgotten graveyard and investigates an ancient grave, half tumbling into ruin and down into the beach below. There he finds a small whistle…

Whistle and I’ll Come to You is the greatest of all M.R. James television adaptations, coming a few years before the BBC got into their stride with the A Ghost Story For Christmas series. It follows the best of all James’ themes, that of the warning to the curious. Parkin doesn’t believe in the supernatural, and as he dismisses anything ghostly over a breakfast conversation you can imagine James rubbing his hands together with glee. Once he inevitibly blows the whistle he is disturbed by vivid dreams, kept awake by images of dark figures following him across the beach. He hears rustling sounds, and the maids comment that both of the beds in his room have been slept in. He eventually has a chilling encounter that will leave him a different person entirely; if not a firm believer on the supernatural then positively disturbed for evermore.

Miller’s film is quite rightly hailed as a classic of British tv. Starting particularly soberly, a pair of maids arranging the stiff sheets of a bed, it develops into one of the most chilling films you’ll ever see. And the bedsheets .. such a prelude for what is to come. Hordern is in possibly his greatest role and, apart from some good support from Ambrose Coghill as a fellow guest, he carries the whole film himself. The photography is in black and white, beautifully shot. There’s no music and less than the usual amount of dialogue. It’s just brilliantly atmospheric, from Hordern’s trudging sound across the shingle to the groans of the ghostly disturbed. Fantastic viewing, especially in the twilight hours.

Comments [4]

Time for the first lines meme. This is the meme where you quote the first sentence from your first post for every month of the last year.

January

David Thewlis is a British actor who has appeared on screen in Mike Leigh’s Naked, the violent thriller Gangster Number 1 with Malcolm McDowell and the ill-fated The Island of Doctor Moreau with Marlon Brando.

February

Since closing the last page of Cold Mountain I’ve been considering quietly forgetting this book, leaving a small gap and then swiftly moving onto the next.

March

A meme to keep things ticking over – if you’d like to join in.

April

Browsing in a second hand bookshop, I overhead a customer making an unusual enquiry.

May

Then we Came to the End by Joshua Ferris gave me one of the strangest reading experiences of recent years.

June

Devil May Care is a new James Bond novel written by Sebastian Faulks to mark the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth.

July

Unusual for a music autobiography, Alex James hasn’t used a ghost writer for his memoir Bit of a Blur.

August

Inspired by Simon’s post I’ve been giving some thought to my holiday reading this year.

September

Call me unusual, but I found Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 perfect summer reading.

October

It’s October time again so my choice in fiction is already turning towards the dark, haunted and peculiar.

November

Beware.

December

Time for the first lines meme.

Comments

Think of John Hurt before he became the grizzled character actor he is today. Still fairly young looking and playing an essentially weak man in The Shout, the sort of oddball role he excelled at early in his career – for example in 10 Rillington Place. Think also of Alan Bates at his nastiest. Co-starring with Hurt in The Shout he plays an extension of the character he portrayed in the film of Pinter’s The Caretaker years before; confident and dangerous, sharp eyed and deadly serious. Alan Bates and John Hurt together in one of the weirdest films ever made. Is there anything more you could ask for? The Shout is based on a short story by Robert Graves. It was directed in 1978 by Jerzy Skolimowski, and also features performances by Susannah York, Tim Curry and Robert Stephens.

The Shout opens at a cricket match. It’s no ordinary sporting event; this is a match at an asylum, the kind of country set Victorian bedlam that was perhaps still around in Graves’ day. Here it’s difficult to spot the inmates from the keepers. Tim Curry (restrained compared to his most famous role as Frank N.Furter) plays the Graves character, asked to keep score. He’s joined by an unsettlingly enigmatic man called Crossley (Bates) who elects to tell him a story as the match gets going….

Anthony and Rachel (Hurt and York) live in Devon, the former a church organist who also makes his own recordings at home. It’s a solitary pursuit as his recordings are decidedly odd – the sound of wasps trapped in glasses for example. All looks slightly removed from domestic harmony as Anthony appears to be carrying out a casual affair with the local cobbler’s wife. Coincidentally, Anthony and Rachel both appear to share the same disturbing dream whilst sunbathing on the sand dunes. They both wake suddenly to discover that Rachel has mysteriously lost the buckle of her shoe.

Anthony later encounters Crossley, dishevelled and apparently down and out, who claims not to have eaten for two days during his recent “travels”. He offers him food, and Crossley accepts, with the result becoming not the most pleasurable of lunch dates. Crossley aggrees to no more than a couple of thin slithers of meat. He reveals that he lived in a remote part of Australia for many years, acts generally weirdly and upsets Rachel to the point where she flees the kitchen. Anthony appears to weakly accept the anti-social behaviour and allows him to stay, looking only more and more disturbed as Crossley’s behaviour gets odder. He finds him sitting, naked, in the spare room and quietly boasting that he has perfected the shout, where all who hear it will die…

Now I don’t know about you, but at this point I’d be thinking about showing the man the door. Even calling the orderlies in white coats and possibly arranging a cricket match but certainly not, as Anthony agrees, to witness one of the shouts in person. Early the next day, Anthony follows Crossley to the beach. As a precautionary measure, he plugs his ears, which is a wise move as the shout kills several sheep, their shepherd and other nearby birds on the beach. This really is the stuff of nightmares.

The Shout is a difficult yet compelling film. Alan Bates is remarkable, creating one of the most effective cinema villains I’ve ever seen. This makes it all the more gripping as the puzzled Anthony tries to resolve the situation, especially when Crossley appears to cast a weird charm over Rachel and seduces her. The scenes are all very intense and quietly played out, which makes the release of the pent up energy in Crossley’s shout all the more disturbing. And this is a film that demands repeated viewing.

An extra on my DVD is a commentary by horror experts Kim Newman and Stephen Jones. The Shout isn’t really a horror film, it’s more an exploration of a battle between two men than might be something catastrophic, or might be just a game of cricket. I haven’t listened to all of the commentary yet but it’s very interesting. Nic Roeg turned down the film when he was offered it. Possibly he was too busy preparing Bad Timing. And David Bowie turned down the offer to provide the music, perhaps busy (and foolishly) filming Just a Gigolo. Instead Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford from Genesis took it on, and do a fair job – although this is a film about sound that doesn’t really need a soundtrack. And look out for Jim Broadbent in an early role – pulling the stops out as the cricket descends into mayhem…

Comments [2]