Like his father
director Ralph Thomas (Doctor in the
House films) and his nephew Gerald Thomas (Carry on . . . film series), Jeremy Thomas always wanted to be a
part of the British film industry. Unlike his relatives, twenty-year old Jeremy
didn't want to make the typical British films. The young filmmaker saw himself
as a "disruptor" and "sounding board" for new "unconventional
ideas." His social connections in the early1970s with Philippe Mora, Mike
Molloy and the artists' community of The Pheasantry at King's Road initiated his
interest in Australian culture. In 1975, screenwriter Michael Austin contacted
Thomas with a script proposal based on a short story entitled The Shout by Robert Graves. Thomas'
interest in the story was aroused by Graves' ability to incorporate Australian
aboriginal beliefs about the death-stone and the soul-stone into a
psychological horror thriller set in a coastal English village. These native
beliefs were rooted in the possibility of human souls awaiting reincarnation in
the bough of a tree or the cleft of a stone.These story elements were unique in 1927 and became topical 50 years
later as part of the Antipodean Fantasy Film genre then developing in Australia,
spearheaded by director Peter Weir's films "Picnic at Hanging Rock"(1975) and "The
Last Wave" (1977).
Graves' story concerned a
psychiatric patient- Crossley- telling a story to a visitor. The story is told
in flashback. In a little village a happily married couple Rachael and Anthony
live in quiet harmony. Secretly, Anthony is having an affair with a local woman
of the village. One day a stranger (the storyteller) appears at the couple's
doorstep and announces that he had just returned from eighteen years in the
Australian Outback where he lived among the Aborigines and studied their magic.
The stranger tells the couple that he has learned the secret of "The Shout"
(which has the power to kill) and possessed the power to steal the love of a
woman by taking possession of some nondescript object belonging to her. The
stranger moves in with the couple and makes the wife his sex slave- he steals
her personhood using a soul-stone. The husband realized that he must find a way
to combat the stranger seemingly implacable power- but how?This psychological jigsaw puzzle comes to a
climax during a thunderstorm at a cricket match in which the truth of
Crossley's possession of the power of the shout is revealed.
Thomas believed a
foreigner with "new eyes" on the subject /location could bring
something extraordinary to this unusual story. Thomas recognized in the vast
array of hyper-active symbolic eccentricities in the film work of polish
director Jerzy Skolimowski (Deep End)
the ideal craftsman to fashion this highly unusual horror story. How the Polish
director transformed Graves' short story into a classic thriller bares
remarkable comparison to what Alfred Hitchcock did when he
"reimagined" Daphne du Maurier's short story into the apocalyptic
allegory film entitled The Birds.
Both directors used creative techniques of sight and sound to fashion their
unique visions of a world of impending danger and destruction. The special
photography work of Ub Twerks, the matte pictorial designs of Albert Whitlock
and the digital imagery of the craftsmen at Cinesite Studios bring to mind
Hitchcock 's vision of the massive bird attacks. Skolimowski used jump-cuts,
visual symbols, non-sequel editing and actual visual symbolism to introduce the
Outback magic into the placid fabric of the English village. Both Hitchcock and
Skolimowski had a deep preoccupation with the use of sound to enhance their
stories. Guided by the musical mastermind Bernard Hermann, Hitchcock used the
sounds created by the Mixtur-Trautonium of Oskar Sala with the assistance of
composer Remi Gassmann. Skolimowski used the spooky chord of a section of the
music piece known as "Undertow" written by Tony Banks, which was
originally intended to be the introductory piece of the Genesis album "And
Then There Were Three." Mike Rutherford and Banks used this music to heighten
the pictorial images recorded by Molloy under Skolimowski's direction to create
an atmosphere of existential dread relating to a haunted topography - an
uncanny feeling caused by viewing something familiar (lovely English
countryside) unnaturally distorted. Skolimowskli utilized the then relatively
new Dolby Sound System to create the unique sound of the Shout. He explained it
" had to be applied at just the right moment so that we would hear
something special. The shock of the sound is not a question of loudness or richness
- it is sudden and it is complex. . ." The brilliance of Skolimowski's
method was highlighted by the way he choreographed how the stranger performed
the Shout and the slow motion photography of the impact of the scream on Anthony.
Producer Thomas was
very fortunate to have been able to assemble such a remarkable cast of actors
to tell the story. If the three leads - Alan Bates as Crossley, Susannah York
as Rachael and John Hurt as Anthony- had not been rightly cast, the story
wouldn't have worked. The Shout won
the Grand Prix de Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978. The whole idea of a
person having the ability to control his destiny - life and death - is
appealing especially in this age of pandemics and government mandates of
behaviour. At a time when most human beings feel helpless to determine their
own future, the idea of such a power or ability seems very attractive. If
nothing else The Shout will make one
question their own mode of existence. If you are looking for something
rewarding, unusual and different to view, your search is over.
Click here to order Blu-ray from Amazon UK (PAL format)
(John P. Harty's latest book is "The Cinematic Challenge: Filming Colonial America, Vol. 3- The International Era, 1976-2020."