THE SHOUT (1978: Dir. Jerzy Skolimowksi )
The cinema-going experience has not always been the eardrum shattering experience that it is for today's audiences. Sound and music were once used much more sparingly to create unique environments and convey emotion. The Sixties and Seventies heralded the era when the music synthesizer moved from the abstract into the mainstream. This new sonic realm was the unique tapestry for the UK production of The Shout, directed by expatriate Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski. Still licking his wounds from the notorious failure of his recent film adaptations of Conan Doyle (The Adventures of Gerard), and Nabokov (King, Queen, Knave), Skolimowski followed up with this adaptation of a short story by another famous literary figure, British poet Robert Graves. The film begins and ends at a cricket match on the grounds of an asylum, where the character of Graves himself (Tim Curry), meets a menacingly mysterious figure (Alan Bates) who relates to him the story of how he inveigled his way sexually, and otherwise, into the lives of avant-garde composer John Hurt and his wife Susannah York. Exploring the power of shamanic aboriginal spells, including the terrifying ability to kill by shouting, the film deftly plays upon the viewer's skepticism by contrasting the modern technology used to create Hurt's otherworldly music, supplied by Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford of the prog rock group GENESIS, with the primal force of Bates' sonic tsunami. Enigmatic, eerie, and worth watching to witness Jim Broadbent, in his film debut, as a man driven convincingly insane by the supernatural forces at play. DVD REGION 2
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