“ARE YOU THERE?”

By Raymond Benson

Writer/director/actor Bryan Forbes was a major force in the British film industry for several decades, having started in the 1950s at times as an actor in films and then in other instances as a screenwriter, and then he moved into directing (his astonishing directorial debut, Whistle Down the Wind, was released in 1961). Forbes made several good pictures, the most famous probably being The Stepford Wives in the 70s.

Forbes also had connections to the world of James Bond. Forbes’ first screenwriting duties were for Albert R. Broccoli’s Warwick Films in the 1950s. When Forbes began writing novels, his literary agent was none other than Peter Janson-Smith, who had been Ian Fleming’s agent. Astute Bond fans will also spot other connections in The Whisperers, such as a John Barry score, and the appearance of Robin Bailey, the actor who, in the pre-credits sequence of You Only Live Twice, plays the Foreign Secretary mediating between the Russians and the Americans (“May I ask what motive our Russian friends would have for wishing to destroy American spacecraft?”).

The Whisperers, released in 1967, was a solid art-house hit starring Dame Edith Evans, earning her a third Oscar nomination in the four years between 1963-1967, this one for lead actress, the other two for supporting (for Tom Jones and The Chalk Garden). While she didn’t win the Oscar for The Whisperers, she did win the BAFTA, the Golden Globe, the New York Film Critics Award, and the National Board of Review Award. Evans was a major star of the British stage, but she made only a few films very early in her career (mostly the 30s) and late (the 60s).

The story is rather dreary and harkens back to the “kitchen-sink dramas” of the late 50s/early 60s that came out of Britain. It’s shot in black and white and focuses on a poor, working class neighborhood in a small town in the north of England. Margaret Ross (Evans) is old, lives alone, is on her way to a case of Alzheimer’s (a term not known then), and is delusional. Every time she enters her flat, she calls out, “Are you there?” because she hears voices in the pipes and walls. The place is a dump full of junk, stacks of newspapers and rotting books, and clutter that would scare anyone away. Her scoundrel husband, Archie (Eric Portman), ran off two decades earlier, and her grown son, Charlie (Ronald Fraser), is a crook who is sent to jail shortly after hiding a stash of stolen cash in his mother’s flat. Mrs. Ross continually lies to the National Assistance agent, although she probably believes the stories she tells. Her discovery of Charlie’s money changes things, though, and before long, estranged husband Archie returns to take advantage of the woman. Things do not go well.

As a statement on the condition of poverty in England at the time, The Whisperers is a potent social problem film. Evans indeed delivers a powerful performance as a paranoid, frightened woman at the end of her rope. Tellingly, the National Assistance was revamped into the Supplementary Benefit around the time the movie was made.

Kino Lorber’s 1920x1080p high definition restoration suitably displays Gerry Turpin’s monochrome cinematography that illustrates the bleakness of Mrs. Ross’ world. There are English subtitles for the hearing-impaired, as well as an audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger. The only supplements are trailers for this and other Kino Lorber titles.

The Whisperers might be depressing, but it’s also example of fine British talent in the form of both Forbes and Evans at the top of their games.

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Cinema Retro's Todd Garbarini with Sonny Grosso at a screening of The French Connection in 2010.

BY TODD GARBARINI

Salvatore Anthony Grosso, known affectionately as Sonny Grosso, passed away on Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at the age of 89. If his name doesn’t ring a bell, his work most assuredly did. Mr. Grosso was originally a New York City police detective who was the partner of Detective Eddie Egan. These two gentlemen both, on a hunch, broke up an organized crime ring which resulted in the seizure of 112 pounds of heroin. This then-unprecedented bust in 1961 provided the basis for the 1969 Robin Moore chronicle of their exploits, The French Connection, and was made into the Oscar-winning classic film of the same name two years later, resulting in a Best Picture win for producer Philip D’Antoni, Best Director for William Friedkin, Best Actor for Gene Hackman (he personified Eddie Egan’s Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle), Best Screenplay for Ernest Tidyman’s adaptation of Mr. Moore’s book, and Best Editing for Jerry Greenberg, most notably for the still hair-raising car chase through the streets of Brooklyn. He also worked on the Philip D’Antoni-directed 1973 film The Seven-Ups which boasts another terrific car chase.

While still police detectives, both Mr. Grosso and Mr. Egan had small roles in The French Connection (the former as Klein and the latter as Simonson) while working in behind-the-scenes roles as technical advisers on the film. Mr. Grosso got to learn the ropes of New York filmmaking and appeared in The Godfather (1972) in the scene wherein McCluskey (Sterling Hayden) clocks Michael Corleone (Al Pacino). His gun made it into the hands of Michael Corleone in the famous Louis’s Restaurant scene when he kills McCluskey Sollozzo.

I was fortunate enough to see Don Rickles at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in March 2004 and was bowled over when it came to my attention that Mr. Grosso was in attendance. I commandeered his attention following the show, much like Doyle wrestled the 1971 Pontiac Le Mans away from the driver in The French Connection and thanked him profusely for his part in making my all-time favorite movie a reality. Six years later we met again at a New York City screening of the film also attended by director Friedkin, and he was kind, gracious and warm to speak with.

Mr. Grosso was also a fixture at Rao’s, an exclusive New York restaurant on East 114^th Street where grew up around the corner from. Here he hung out with family and friends, and the establishment was co-owned by the late Frank Pellegrino Sr. who played Johnny Dio in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) and is probably best known as FBI Chief Frank Cubitoso on HBO’s The Sopranos.

Mr. Grosso’s new book, a memoir entitled Harlem to Hollywood, My Real-to-Reel Life, will obviously be published posthumously, although I cannot locate a publication date. I look forward to this book with anticipation, as will all of us who admire his contributions as a police officer and to the film world.

“IT’S THE BUNK!”

By Raymond Benson

In the year 1940, Hollywood screenwriter Preston Sturges elevated his career to become one of the first writer/director double threats since the silent days of Chaplin and Keaton. For a brief five years in the early 40s, his flame burned brightly as he churned out sophisticated screwball comedies that had great wit, intelligence, and a stock company of iconic supporting comic actors—the guys you always recognize but never know their names (actually, they are talents like William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, Al Bridge, Georgia Caine, and Ernest Truex, to name a handful who appear in Christmas in July).

After winning an Oscar for writing The Great McGinty (1940), Sturges presented superb material through 1945. Short, smart, and hilarious, Christmas in July was his second directorial effort from a script based on his own unproduced stage play. Like most of Sturges’ works, the story concerns the Everyman who wants nothing more than to better himself—and if he must challenge authority and make some waves while he does it, then so be it.

July’s Everyman is Jimmy (Dick Powell), who works as a lowly office man in a major corporation. Interestingly, the depiction of the militaristic and robotic employees and their strictly enforced drudgery is a foreshadowing of how Billy Wilder portrayed the insurance agency grindhouse in The Apartment, twenty years later! Jimmy dreams of making enough money to justify proposing to his sweetheart, Betty (Ellen Drew). In fact, he has entered a contest sponsored by a rival coffee producing company to invent a new advertising slogan, the winner of which will receive $25,000. (His slogan is “If you can’t sleep at night, it’s not the coffee—it’s the bunk!” Get it?)

As a cruel prank, three of Jimmy’s colleagues create a phony telegram, informing him that he’s won. A further series of miscommunications and timing mishaps deliver the real prize money to Jimmy, so he goes on a huge spending spree for Betty (a diamond ring), his mother, and his friends and neighbors on his block. To reveal what happens when the powers-that-be discover the mistake would spoil the rest of the story!

The picture is not really a “Christmas movie.” The title simply refers to the spending spree Jimmy goes on. It’s “like Christmas” for everyone. What makes the film unique for a comedy—and there are many laughs—is the tremendous amount of suspense that is built. Sturges sets up the situation and then lets it explode with one misunderstanding after another. The audience knows that eventually Jimmy’s good fortune is going to come crashing down. We so want it to turn out well for our hero and his girl… but will it?

It's fabulous stuff.

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray 1920x1080p restoration looks good enough (much better than the previous DVD release in a Sturges box set from some years ago), and it comes with an optional audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan. There are no other supplements other than theatrical trailers for this and other Kino Lorber releases. (Note to Sturges fans—The Great McGinty is coming soon on Blu-ray, too!)

Preston Sturges was a national treasure, and anything he released between 1940-1945 is a classic to be savored. Christmas in July is one of those delectables.

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“RISE OF THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN”

By Raymond Benson

Along with the French New Wave that kick-started in 1959, Britain had its own informal New Wave of what was referred to as the “angry young man” or “kitchen sink” dramas. They began on the stage with such playwrights as John Osborne (whose play, Look Back in Anger, became one of the British New Wave’s seminal works on film). Filmmakers like Jack Clayton, Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, and Karel Reisz are most often associated with the movement, which presented gritty, realistic tales of domestic or socio-economic situations involving working class families and/or single protagonists struggling to get ahead in an England that hadn’t quite pulled herself out of the post-war doldrums.

Room at the Top was one of the first—and best—of the bunch, and even more remarkable is that it was Jack Clayton’s feature directorial debut. Made on a low budget in stark black and white (photographed by the great Freddie Francis), Room stars Laurence Harvey as the angry young man, Joe, who migrates from a small English town to a larger one in order to work his way to the “top”—the area of the city where the wealthy and powerful reside. Ambitious to boot, Joe starts off with a lowly job in the borough treasurer’s office but has his eyes on much more, including the decidedly off-limits Susan (Heather Sears), the beautiful daughter of the most powerful man in the community. While he’s wooing her, though, Joe begins an at-first casual, then frighteningly serious, affair with Alice, an older French woman (Simone Signoret) who is in an unhappy marriage. Both Susan’s parents and Alice’s husband eventually learn what’s going on and set out to foil Joe’s respective relationships, as well as his standing in the societal bubble where he resides.

It sounds dreary when capsulized in this way, but in fact Room at the Top is an engaging, beautifully acted, and well-written drama that is as much a character study as it is a comment on the social problems facing Britain at the time. Its harsh frankness was shocking back then, forcing the picture to be marketed “for mature audiences only” (it was still nine years before the U.S. movie ratings were installed). This was adult stuff.

Nevertheless, audiences and critics took to it, for the film became an international success. In America, it ended up being nominated for Oscars—Best Picture, Best Director for Clayton, Best Actor for Harvey, Best Supporting Actress for Hermione Baddeley (in an appearance that holds the record for briefest on-screen time), and winning the Best Actress award for Signoret and the Best Adapted Screenplay trophy for Neil Paterson.

Kino Lorber’s new 1920x1080p restoration looks very good, is sharp and striking, and comes with an audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger and theatrical trailers for the picture and other Kino titles.

Room at the Top is a relic of its time, perhaps, but it’s a classic example of fine British filmmaking where the pizazz is in the writing, acting, and direction. Highly recommended.

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