![]() This leads to the following exchange, captured in a beautifully framed shot with Myra stood looking down at the seated Billy, facing forward and avoiding eye contact, his face conveying quiet grief and resignation: After a pregnant pause, Billy carefully replies, “ Well, then it must have been me.” When Billy mildly corrects her, Myra responds, “ Why would I turn it off?” Her defensive tone suggests that she will not rather than cannot remember. In an early scene, Myra complains that the house is too quiet, and chastises Billy for turning off the music, even though we saw her switch it off herself a few moments before. To describe the relationship between Myra and Billy as strained and dysfunctional would be an understatement. Myra, an unstable Medium, persuades her reticent husband Billy (Attenborough) to “ borrow” the young daughter of a wealthy industrialist, so that she can use her abilities to help them find their kidnapped child, for personal and financial gain. This simple image prepares the audience for the themes and tone of the film beautifully – ordinary but odd, suburban but gothic, outwardly respectable but inwardly twisted, hidden secrets and sadness played out on drab, rainy streets.įorbes’ screenplay, adapted from the novel of the same name by Mark McShane, tells a strange tale of dubious psychic powers, kidnap, marital strife and ghostly children. (This was a genuine feature of the real house in Wimbledon used for this location.) As the opening credits begin, we see this turret room reflected upside-down in a puddle on the rain soaked pavement. The attendees leave what seems to be an ordinary modern residence, save for a stylised turreted room, where the séance took place. ![]() Medium Myra Savage (Kim Stanley) murmurs vague descriptions from the beyond to her small audience (“ A message…A young face…Peaceful”), before abruptly pinching out the candle, business concluded. The film opens with one of the titular séances that punctuate critical points of the narrative, moving slowly from a single burning candle to the doleful faces of the sitters gathered in the darkened, strangely shaped room. (The previous two were The L-Shaped Room and Whistle Down The Wind.) R eleased in 1964, Séance On A Wet Afternoon is a dark psychological thriller with subtle supernatural overtones, the last in a short series of British films from the early 1960s directed by Bryan Forbes and produced by Richard Attenborough.
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