The Whisperers

This may be the bleakest of all the 'kitchen sink' movies, (it is unremittingly gloomy) and Bryan Forbes' picture of the British Welfare State in the 1960's has an almost Dickensian feel to it. But then Forbes always seemed to work better with subjects which didn't lend themselves to levity.

It's the story of Mrs Ross, a pensioner living on her own and beset by the voices one hears when one is so lonely and in the part Edith Evans is quite magnificent. If you think Evans too patrician for the part of an old woman living in a working class district of an industrial, mostly derelict and rain-sodden city, she does point out that 'she married beneath her' and since she is hardly ever off the screen this is a real tour-de-force, (and she was nominated for the Oscar for it as well as winning a whole slew of other awards). There are also first-rate supporting performances from the wonderful Avis Bunnage and the always consistently reliable Gerald Sim and Eric Portman, terrific as her errand husband). Unfortunately the film's sub-plots involving stolen money and some gangsters seems superfluous and gives the film a somewhat melodramatic air and its down-beat mood meant it was never a popular success and it is hardly ever revived. But seek it out, all the same; it is certainly worth seeing.