Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

 

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

 

“But Arthur understands. We’re doing it with is blessing.”

 

That’s a telling line of dialogue. In fact, it tells everything, but comes so early in the film that the Audience knows nothing of the Criminal Plot, or how insane the woman speaking the words actually is.

 

At least, not yet.

 

Color in motion pictures goes back farther than you probably realize, both hand-painting individual frames and a form of color film go at least as far back as 1902, with Director Georges Méliès film “Voyage to the Moon” (the former) and experimental strips created by Edward Raymond Turner (the latter). Also, the transition from B&W to color was longer than you might think, “Phantom of the Opera” (1925) had some color footage, and there were big-budget features offered beautiful color throughout the 1930s, two especially striking examples were “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone with the Wind” (both 1939). Still, even after WWII, color was prohibitively expensive for many films, and the available color technology didn’t serve some cinematic goals. The Crime, Horror, and War Genres were the most resistant to employing color for the longest. B&W offered a texture with a touch of abstraction to the representational image with its darker shadows, it was also a balm to violence-adverse censors so, even if there were no budgetary issues, some Directors would still go the B&W route; Director Alfred Hitchcock’s first color film was “Rope” (1948) but he switched back to B&W for the more violent “Psycho” (1960). B&W and color features existed comfortably side-by-side until somewhere around 1966 (when the Academy Awards last gave separate Awards for B&W and color Cinematography and Costuming). Even today, when almost all films are shot digitally, there’s the occasional B&W, a purely Artistic choice, like in film like “Nebraska” (2013), but with digital B&W, the color must be removed during post-production.

 

“Seance on a Wet Afternoon” is among the last to embrace B&W before became uncommon, it is also among the most beautiful. This is obvious even in the title sequence of elegant cars pulling away from a grand mansion house in poor weather. The camera lingers a few extra seconds on the reflective paint and chrome of the vehicles, the dull but vivid sky, the distortions of light created by moisture, even the shapes of opening umbrellas seem more striking without color. It’s nothing short of luxurious. We know nothing of the plot except the title, the story only begins when we get inside the house, but these images combined with Composer John Barry’s score (perhaps his best though it is not one of his seven Oscar Wins/Nominations) speak of dread and Ghosts, and though the story proves to have no Supernatural elements, it still proves to have plenty of both.

 

The Cinematographer was by Gerry Turpin whose film career began in 1945 as a Camera Assistant and this was only his second feature as the lead Cameraman. His previous film, “The Queen's Guards” (1961) was in color, as was virtually the whole rest of his career. In this film, Turpin combines styles, nicely articulated by Critic Matt Medlock, “the crude, pitiless contrasts and close-ups of the country’s kitchen sink realism movement … [and] the clammy atmosphere of dread comes from the Gothic tradition; as such, rarely has a movie with no certain supernatural effect felt so full of ghostly mystery.”

 

As for the interiors of the house, where the main action unfolds, the sets were designed by Art Director Ray Simm. Wrote The Monthly Film Bulletin, “The atmosphere is beautifully furthered by the décor – the hideously oppressive living-room, the ancient gramophone scratchily playing a haunting Mendelssohn song, the glaring whiteness of the bedroom disguised as a hospital, the polished gloom of the seance chamber, the discreetly overgrown garden.”

 

It’s based on a novel of the same name Mark McShane (1961). It’s the story of a fake Psychic, Myra Savage (Kim Stanely), warped by Grief (the above-mentioned Arthur is her dead son), desperate to prove herself to be legit, and launching a Kidnapping-for-profit scheme (the victim is to be Character Amanda Clayton, played by Child-Actress Judith Donner, who is quite good in her only film appearance) that proves not to be about the money, but really just another step down her road of Self-Delusion. Her weakling husband, Billy (Richard Attenborough), seems at first in denial of her Deteriorating Mental Health, but it emerges that his blindness is willfully motivated, his own will crippled by the of loss of any faith that anything can get better but desperately needing to preserve what little is left of their marriage.

 

That his belittling wife insists on calling “Billy,” avoiding the more adult “Will” or “William,”  just underlines the off-balance power dynamic, and that the one who controls the dynamic is seriously off-balance herself. Billy Savage is just silly-sounding to the ear, but becomes darker in its discordance when physical Savagery is expected from him. This is perhaps the darkest story of co-dependance in cinema.

 

Immediately after the tile sequence is the first of several long conversations between the two. The first dialogue suggests but does not clarify the emerging Caper plot, but Myra’s instability is obvious as she casually humiliates Billy, demonstrates her Short-, and Long-, term Memory are challenged, and that her aggressive positivity is fraudulent. She repeatedly speaks of how perfect their plan is, how it must be followed to the letter, but, as the story unfolds, the plan she’s hatched proves a terrible one. Still, she has a manipulative power, and not only over Billy. Every time she starts slipping, she still manages to put that power on display.

 

Though the story is simple enough, the Characters in-over-their heads provide the tale multiple threads. In the middle of the film is a key sequence, more dynamic than the deftly-executed climax. It involves twelve minutes of intercutting as Billy tries to collect the ransom done with compelling location footage, some of it shot Guerilla-Style with a hidden camera (and some of that requiring reshooting because they accidently got the Actor, Sir John Gielgud, who was not part of this project, accidently in frame) while simultaneously a Policeman (Gerald Sim) is interviewing Myra back home. Both are Suspenseful, but present radically different forms of that idea. Billy’s parts are frantic, Myra’s carefully measured.

 

This film was part of a long-running collaboration between Attenborough (here an Actor and Producer) and Bryan Forbes (here the Screenwriter and Director). They took on different roles in their various films and they created. They even founded a studio together in 1961, along with Director Basil Dearden, Actor Jack Hawkins, and Producer Michael Relph, called Allied Film Makers. These men wore almost all the possible hats at different times during the studios years of existence, and made many of the most distinctive English films of the 1960s, but the venture collapsed into bankruptcy because too much of their best work never found an Audience.

 

The biggest obstacle in pre-production was the casting of Character Myra, who was equal parts fragile, steely, and contemptable, but needed to be always sympathetic. The Actress needed to find a way into Myra without Hysteria even though Myra was barely covering that very emotion in each and every scene. These challenges can be demonstrated by contrasting “Seace on a …” to a closely related film:

 

The B&W Cinematography was obviously influenced by the great Ghost film, “The Innocents” (1961), shot by Freddie Francis (who was better known as the Director of more lurid Color Horror films for Hammer Studios) and featured a female lead of not-completely-dissimilar Mental Disturbances. That film’s Star, Deborah Kerr, turned down the role of Myra here, as did many others; there was scheduling issues with some, little faith in the film’s marketability with others, but the main reason may have been that it was a really tough role and perhaps one the audience would hold against the Star. It got so bad that there was even talk of recasting Myra as a man, but that was before Attenborough and Forbes found Actress Stanely, from the USA. I’d argue that Stanley’s performance here tops that of Actress Kerr’s amazing work in “The Innocents” because Kerr does let the Hysteria loose, and that was her Character’s admission that she knew she was losing it, even though the Reality of the Ghosts in the film remained elusive. Myra never admits to herself she’s losing it; not even by the closing credits.

 

Myra forever badgers in a kind voice, “You’re weak … you need me.” Billy agrees and averts his eyes. She lies to Billy and herself with total conviction, “What we are doing is not wrong” because “the child won’t be hurt in any way.” She won’t allow the word “Kidnapping” to be used, “We’ve borrowed a child, Billy. Borrowed, borrowed. Just keep saying that ... What we are doing is a means to an end. You agree with the end, don’t you? Well, you must agree with the means.”

 

When the mother of the Kidnapped child, Mrs. Clayton (Nanette Newman, Director Forbes wife, who was in virtually all his films) arrives at the door, Myra acts as if this was unexpected even though that’s what she plotted all along. Myra is exuberant, “She can share my truth!”

 

And, of course, when the ill-conceived plan finally goes awry, Myra orders Billy to kill the little girl.

 

Stanley had trained with Actor Marlon Brando and a number of other Hollywood legends, but preferred the live-stage to cinema, as she saw cinema was more about the Directors creativity than that of the Cast. Her career was long, much honored, featured two Oscar nominations, this film was one of them, but focusing on film alone, her resume is remarkably short. Actor Attenborough praised her, she had the "complexity of dramatic impression vital to the credibility of Myra was hard to find. Also, an intellectual ability to follow and understand the character. I didn’t believe Simone [Signoret, another Actress considered for the part] could convey, as Kim did, the otherworldliness which this woman inhabited in her private fantasies."

 

Brando also spoke of her positively, “Nothing like the honesty and intense emotional gambling in which she engages in ‘The Goddess’ [1958, a risky part, a fictional version of Actress Marylin Monroe when Monroe was still at the peak of her career] and ‘Seance on a Wet Afternoon’ had been attempted before: It was dangerous acting, and she was remarkable. Any deficiencies I confidently bestow upon her directors, neither of whom knew how to handle her or appreciate her or amplify her.”

 

Stanely’s involvement must have been helped by both Attenborough and Forbes being hugely admired Actors before they (occasionally) moved behind the camera. She also responded to the slightly unusual choice of filming the scenes in-sequence, assisting her negotiating her complex Character and also the way live-theater is done.

 

1965 would prove a big year for Insane Villainesses, it also featured excellent work by Actress Catherine Deneuve as Character Carole Ledoux in “Repulsion” (another B&W film), but by far, Character Myra was the meatier of the two parts.

 

Reading about film productions, one mostly reads of seemingly insurmountable odds, either surmounted or not. “Séance on a …” didn’t have the problems of many I’ve read about, but not unproblematic. Stanley was a live-stage Actress and had a difficult relationship with the camera; immersed in a scene, she didn’t always hit her marks on the set, leaving Cinematographer Turpin scrambling because these were the days before Autofocus. She also had a personal trauma; she was devastated when her friend, Playwright Clifford Odets, went into a Medical Crisis which he ultimately didn’t survive. Following this film, she did some work over the next two years, but then disappeared from acting entirely for almost two decades (she earned her second Oscar nomination after her triumphant return). And Actor Attenborough was crippled by Kidney Stones during production and needed to be doubled by Director Forbes in some scenes.

 

Stanley and Attenborough’s performances were universally hailed, but as The Monthly Film Bulletin pointed out, Director Forbes, “does an excellent job, and no doubt the perfectly modulated acting (no hysteria, no Look It's My Mad Scene) is largely due to his sympathetic handling of the actors.”

 

I’d also praise The Sunday Telegraph for finding the perfect word, calling the film, despite its dark themes, "compassionate,” because the film managed to be so to both Monstrous Myra and pathetic Billy. It’s basically a Psycho-Thriller, how often does the word “compassionate” apply to that kind of film?

 

London's Daily Express called it, "superbly atmospheric." The New York Harold Tribune called it "the perfect psychological suspense thriller and a flawless film to boot." The New York Times, "it isn’t often you see a melodrama that sends you forth with a lump in your throat, as well as a set of muscles weary from being tense for nigh two hours." And, as I said above, Stanely got an Oscar nomination, losing to Julie Andrews in “Mary Poppins,” who was kind of a shoe-in. Unfairly, the Cinematography, Score, and Script were not Nominated.

 

But the film bombed. It was a difficult film for sure, a Crime/Horror fusion that wouldn’t allow the audience either fully embrace nor condemn the Protagonists, so a hard sell for those more drawn to above-mentioned Fisher’s Directorial outings wherein Actor Chrisopher Lee played a super-Sexy hissing Vampire Character named Dracula, all laid out in wonderfully lurid Color. This film, and failure another from the same studio, “Life of Ruth” (1962), a raw but surprisingly even-handed examination of Religious Belief in conflict with Medical Knowledge (a Jehovah’s Witness father refuses to allow his child to have a blood transfusion and she dies), were what brought down Allied Film Makers, though all its key players went on to greater success elsewhere.

 

The film would by remade in Japan as “Séance” (2000) and adapted to an opera (2009).

Trailer:

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) Original Trailer [FHD] (youtube.com)