The Shout (1979)
The Shout (1979)
Among the oddest Horror Movies you’ll
ever see, it examines how attractive a complete Narcissist can be, and how that
attraction can lead to one’s own destruction.
The film opens with a Cricket Match at an Insane Asylum,
establishes from the beginning that Charles Crossley (Alan Bates) is an Unreliable
Narrator. We are also introduced to a Character amusingly named after
the Author of the novella the film is based on, Robert Graves (Tim Curry), to whom
Charles narrates the rest of the story, told in flashback. “Every word of what I'm going to tell
you is true. Though I tell it in a different way, it's always the same story.
It's always the same story, but I change the sequence of events and I vary the
climaxes a little, because I like to keep it alive. You see, I like to keep it
alive.”
After the main tale is completed, there is an epilogue that throws
Charles’ unreliability into question. Details from the opening scenes that seem
to undermine the events of the main narrative now fall into place differently, suggesting
Charles might have been telling something sort-of like the truth throughout,
opening the possibility that the power of Narcissism can extend beyond more Tangible
Realities.
In the flashbacks, Charles is a foot-loose World Traveler who
deliberately cultivates an air of Mystery about himself. He has a chance
encounter with a married couple, Anthony and Rachael Fielding (John Hurt and
Susanna York), who extend their hospitality to him and he regales them with
tales of his time among Australia’s Aboriginals and the Supernatural Secrets
they taught him. Very early on, he’s contrasted with a small-town Vicar (Julian
Hough) who employs the faithless Anthony, who is a gifted Musician, as the
Church Organist. In two sperate scenes, only one of the pair of Vicar and
Charles present in each, the script offers us something that is almost a debate
between the two:
Vicar: “We find ourselves living in disturbing times. The
foundations of our society are not firm. We're like a rudderless ship. No
direction. No one has any conviction any more. You see, we don't believe -
anything! We are in a period of moral starvation.”
Then later:
Charles:
“Religions all have to answer the same
question.”
Rachel: What?”
Charles: “Has the human a soul? And if he has - where does he
keep it?”
Rachel: “Has the Vicar any idea?”
Charles: “His belief is based on speculation.”
Charles’ Narcistic beliefs are absolute, but he’s often evasive
when faced with specific questions. Any belief by any other, is just pure
“speculation” before his ego. Charles was clearly one of those pseudo-Mystic/Shaman
types who wants to build a Cult around him and captivating his Minions with
force of Will. I can’t help but think of Jackie Marks, a child of European
Jews, who, after 1969, preferred to be called, Jamake Mamake Highwater, and won
many Literary Awards for his writings on his wholly fictional Native American Heritage,
then exposed as a Pretendian in 1981, yet even after he still secured choice
consulting jobs as later as 1995 with the TV show “Star Trek: Voyager” because
apparently not everyone got the memo he was a Fraud.
Charles is a larger man than Anthony and his Masculinity is
full of Menace. He’s both Charming and Captivating, much of what he says is Shocking
and Insane. He discusses Infanticide among the Aboriginals, a very real thing,
but also a Malthusian burden placed on the Tribes because of food insecurity
and outside threats, while Charles insists that it was somehow Spiritual and that
he indulged himself with obviously greater selfishness than a less-voluntary
Nomad.
For some reason, this Conventional couple don’t toss him out
of their house right then-and-there. They’re too polite, giving him method to
enter their home, and soon he’s made Anthony submissive to him spiritually, and
Rachel sexually. His captivation of them both is something akin to Demonic
Possession, especially Rachael, who de-Evolves into something Primitive, eventually
is scuttling around her bedroom on all fours, looking for Charles, who controls
her through a Totemistic spell (the image echoes Francis Bacon’s painting “Paralytic
Child Walking on all Fours” (1961) pinned to a wall in another scene of the
film). Critic Roger Ebert noted, "What makes the movie terrifying is the
way in which the outback magic is introduced so naturally into the placid
fabric of village life."
The whole film is quite Dreamlike, but the Dreaminess is
grounded in Realistic details. In particular are scenes wherein Anothony labors
in his music studio, experimenting with the Surreal tones of the then-new concept
of extreme electronic distortion of mundane sounds. As Anthony is unaware that he’s
trapped in a Horror film so there’s a strong irony in that he’s creating a very
appropriate score for his personal Armageddon. This, and the more subtle
movements of the film’s music, were provided by Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford,
two members of the rock group Genesis. This could be considered transitional
work for the Musicians, Genesis was an Art Rock Band, soon to be unrecognizable
to those of us who know them as 1980s Pop-Giants.
1978 had been a good year for
SF,F&H (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Watership Down,” “Halloween,” etc.)
but this one stands apart, choosing intimacy over either aggression or
epic-ness and exploring our relationship to Myth unlike anything else I can
think of other than the films of Director Peter Wier.
It was Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, who grew up
under Stalinism in Poland and moved in the circles of his Nation’s greatest
Filmmakers. He collaborated with Director Roman Polanski on the Script for the
Oscar-Winning “Knife in the Water” (1962) and was involved in a number of
International Productions including the much-praised Comedy “Le Départ” (1967). These International
connections apparently left him feeling bold because that same year, upon his
return to Poland, he made the semi-Autobiographical and Surrealist “Hands Up!”
which wasn’t subtle in its attacks on Communist abuses. The film banned for
more than a decade (not released until 1981) and Skolimowski went
into exile. His following movies made in Western
Europe enhanced his reputation, leading him to be tapped for this challenging
project.
It's based on a novella of the
same name by Author Graves, then world-famous for his “Claudius” series (first
book 1934). This script was a collaboration between Graves and Michael Austin (later,
after he secured the project, Skolimowski contributed enough to get a
screen-credit). It had proved a difficult script to sell, but was embraced with
enthusiasm by Producer Jeremy
Thomas. Thomas had worked behind the camera in cinema since childhood and
graduated to Producer at the remarkably young age of 27 with “Mad Dog Morton” (1976),
a film notable for the intensity of praise and condemnation it engendered. “The
Shout,” was his immediate follow-up, was far-more praised, but not without its
frustrations. Critic
Richard Scheib put it well, “It is a film that is both complex and slight,
fascinating and puzzling – which is no doubt exactly what Jerzy Skolimowski
intended it to be.” In the decades that followed Producer Thomas would
earn many accolades including an Oscar.
Thomas had first tried to secure
Director Nicholas Roeg for the film (Countryman of the above-mentioned Weir,
and they are stylistically similar) but was unsuccessful. He found Skolimowski’s
style similar to Roeg and, yes, the influence of both Roeg and Wier is obvious
in Skolimowski’s powerful intelligence, ambiguity, restrained pacing in the midst of a wild narrative,
and emphasis on mood and sense of place.
The key Fantastical Element is
that Character Charles has learned to kill with the power of his shout. Thomas
again, “What I liked was that Skolimowski found the idea of filming the actual
physical shout a stimulating one. He shared that aspect with me.”
At the time there was a
revolution is sound going on in film. It was led by a small cadre of
Young-Turks from American
Zoetrope, the most famous being Producers/Directors Francis Ford
Coppola and George Lucas,
but also Luas’ close friend Producer/Director Steven Spielberg, and separately
but marching towards the same goal, Producer/soon-to-be-Director Barabara
Streisand, far more famous as a Singer, but as a Singer, obsessed with sound
technology. And they were empowered by changes in that technology allowing a
more immersive Sound Environment; the big-ticket items of this new technologies
were Sensurround and the Dolby Optical Stereo Sound System.
“The Shout” made in England just after Lucas’ “Star Wars” (1977,
and though a USA production it was largely filmed in England) which won two sound-related
Oscars and utilized Dolby. Skolimowski also went the Dolby route, the
first wholly English Production to do so, but with more restraint than Lucas’ big
and bold Space Opera: The terrible, Supernatural, shout was uttered only three
times, twice incompletely. Instead, Skolimowski carefully heightened environmental
sounds to create anticipation for it.
Skolimowski, “Most people think
the Dolby system belongs to films like ‘Star Wars.’ But the danger is that
these big budget films over¬ use it, and overuse becomes dull. But that is the
moneymen for you. Once that sort of luxury item is budgeted into the picture
they want their money's worth. ‘The Shout’ is the first medium budget picture
to use the system and we used it only as a sense experience. The film was
calculated along those lines.
“I had no idea what I wanted for
the actual sound of the shout itself, but I knew I had a strong hand of cards
to play. I was cutting the film by day and learning about electronic gadgets by
night. After you hear a sound more than five times you lose the ability to
judge it. I had to know instinctively what I wanted, something to impress the
audience when the actual shout scene arrived in the film, something they would
anticipate being knocked-out by. We used forty different tracks for the effect,
all a mélange of extremes, but you definitely hear the hu¬ man voice …
“The original Robert Graves story
had some¬ thing to tell us about the psyche. I can go for the distortion of
people’s minds within the context of a personal statement, but it boils down to
what one personally feels the cinema to be about. To most people it is an
escape, and I go along with that to a certain degree, but how much more
interesting and relevant is the description of cinema as a dream house,
primarily to make us think within those fantasies.”
That first scene with the shout
has raw power. There’s was no way the sound manipulation could live up the anticipation
(the Audience did, in fact, survive every screening of the film) but the deftly
constructed effect was buttressed by the intense physicality of Actor Bates performance
and deft cut-aways to what the main characters didn’t see, notably the shout
killing a Shepard and his flock of sheep.
Location footage was no small
part of this. The most striking scenes, including the first shout, were shot at the Saunton Burrows Sand Dunes,
2,000 acres inland from the Atlantic Ocean coastline of North Devon. Most of
the rest of the location footage was near there. The Cinematographer was Mike
Molloy, and Skolimowski, like Roeg and Wier before him, relied heavily on his
Cinematographers. Roeg himself was a Cinematographer before turning to Directing
and Skolimowski was a Painter.
It was not
Low-, but no more than Modestly-Budgeted, enough money for some technical innovations
and exceptional Casting, but conscious that it belonged on the Art-House
circuit, lacking the wide-appeal of the fore-mentioned, “Invasion of the
…,” “Watership Down,” and “Halloween.” Not in terms of gross-income, but on an
investment-vs-return measure, it was far more successful than “Watership Down”
but slipped into obscurity soon after it’s initial run.
Periodically, there have been revivals of interest in
this film, but it remains mostly obscure, one of those hidden gems, always
waiting to be found anew.
Trailer:
Comments
Post a Comment