THE WHISPERERS

UK, 1966, 109 minutes, Black and white.
Edith Evans, Eric Portman, Nanette Newman.
Directed by Bryan Forbes.

The Whisperers is a one-woman film and offers a wonderful performance by Dame Edith Evans as Mrs Ross. She played this part when she was in her mid-70's. The Whisperers continues in the tradition of the social-awareness dramas that Britain produced in the sixties. It focuses on an elderly widow and her problems of loneliness and finance. In passing it touches on many of the social problems that crop up day-to-day; housing, thieving, gambling etc.

Bryan Forbes has written and directed a number of social dramas, The L- Shaped Room, Seance on a Wet Afternoon. They have been more popular at the box-office than The Whisperers, bringing home to us the truth of T.S. Eliot's comment that mankind can bear very little reality.

1. Were you touched by the story and by Edith Evans' acting in the film or did the situation seem too remote? Why?

2. Is poverty a similar issue elsewhere? Poverty in cities, country areas; the pension - how much is it, how can poor, elderly, disabled people live on it?

3. Why was Mrs Ross so lonely? Was it her difficult character, her snobbery, her husband's desertion, society? Remember the scene where she hears the Parliamentarian on radio talk about the lonely and her reaction is 'poor old souls'.

4. Was the film too depressing with racism, family squabbles, suburban thieves, drink, gamblers, murderers - a microcosm of evil? Or did it put Mrs Ross and her problem into a wider, more real world?

5. Why couldn't Mrs. Ross be reconciled with her husband?

6. Why was this film an accusation of society 's apathy and indifference to social issues? Does this apathy mean that we take this evil for granted, read about and do nothing about it?