The Woman in Black

We seem to have established a tradition of showing a horror film around the time of Halloween.  In past years we've screen Let The Right One In and 30 Days of Night, and this year we're screening The Woman in Black.

 

My wife is a great fan of Susan Hill's writing and has seen the play (via school trips) more than a dozen times, so we decided to watch it at home.  We started the film quite late - inevitably - and were quite enjoying it.  Then just as we were getting to the scary part in Eel Marsh House there was a powercut.  Fortunately there was no rocking chair in a locked room upstairs and no visit from the Woman in Black herself.

 

Here are my notes:

 

The Woman in Black

UK 2011                      94 minutes

Director:                      James Watkins

Starring:                        Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds, Janet McTeer, Roger Allam, Shaun Dooley, Sophie Stuckey

 “Her face, in its extreme pallor, her eyes, sunken but unnaturally bright, were burning with the concentration of passionate emotion which was within her and which streamed from her.  Whether or not this hatred and malevolence was directed towards me I had no means of telling – I had no reason at all to suppose that it could possibly have been, but at that moment I was far from able to base my reactions upon reason and logic.  For the combination of the peculiar, isolated place and the sudden appearance of the woman and the dreadfulness of her expression began to fill me with fear.”

Susan Hill: The Woman in Black

 Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a young solicitor, visits the remote coastal village of Crythin Gifford to obtain the paperwork to sell the remote, bleak and desolate Eel March House after the death of Mrs Drablow, an elderly client of his firm.  While staying at the house, Kipps sees the mysterious figure of a woman dressed in black and from letters he discovers he finds out who she is.  From the locals he learns that the appearance of the Woman in Black always leads to the death of a child.

 The film is based on the classic novel by Susan Hill which was previously filmed in 1989 with a screenplay by Nigel Kneale (of Quatermass fame), which has also been dramatised for the stage and has been running in London for more than 20 years.  The novel consciously echoes the style of the great ghost stories of M R James (one of the chapters has the title “Whistle and I’ll Come to You”), but the skillful adaptation by Jane Goodman, while retaining the key elements of Hill’s novel and remaining true to its spirit, reorders and compresses them to make them more immediate – and more chilling.

 The film received much publicity through the astute casting of Daniel Radcliffe in his first post-Potter role, with his performance as the young solicitor receiving generally good reviews.  It is also worth noting that the film is the most successful production to date of the relaunched Hammer Film Productions, the company dominated the horror film market from the mid-1950s to the 1970s with innumerable cycles of films featuring Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy. 

The Woman in Black has been the most successful Hammer film ever in the USA as well as the highest grossing UK horror film for 20 years. Hammer Films has subsequently announced that there will be a sequel to the film, currently called The Woman in Black: Angels of Death.  Susan Hill will provide an original story set during the Second World War: Eel Marsh House has been converted to a military mental hospital and the arrival of disturbed soldiers re-awakes its darkest inhabitant.

 

Here's the trailer:

 

 

The Descendants

Our plan was to screen The Descendants, but a mix up over the DVD meant that we had to screen an alternative.  The screening of a film with George Clooney had attracted a certain demographic, so we offered everyone a freee glass of wind and screened The American instead.

We will screen The Descendants at a later date, but here are my notes anyway:

The Descendants

USA 2011                    115minutes

Director:                      Alexander Payne

Starring:                        George Clooney, Amara Miller, Beau Bridges, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Michael Ontkean, Nick Krause, Robert Forster, Shailene Woodley

Awards and Nominations

·         Won Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and four further nominations including Best Director, Best Film and Best Actor (George Clooney).

·         BAFTA nominations for Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor (George Clooney).

·         A further 47 wins and 66 nominations.

“Nothing gives me more pleasure than to welcome a new film by the gifted writer-director Alexander Payne, especially as The Descendants, his first movie since Sideways eight years ago, is so good, and in so many ways.”

 Philip French

After his wife has been left comatose by an accident while water skiing Matt King (George Clooney), a rich landowner in Hawaii, discovers that she has been having an affair.  The accident forces him to face up to his responsibilities as a (failed) husband and father and he sets off on a scenic tour of his life.

The film received its first screenings at the Telluride, Toronto and New York film festivals and was then scheduled to have a limited release in December 2011.  However the positive critical response from its initial screenings resulted in its release date being brought forward.    The film subsequently appeared in many critics’ lists of the best films of 2011 and won many awards for George Clooney, Alexander Payne (as writer and director) and as Best Film.

 In his four star review of the film Roger Ebert was particularly impressed by George Clooney:

 “And George Clooney? What essence does Payne see in him? I believe it is intelligence. Some actors may not be smart enough to sound convincing; the wrong actor in this role couldn't convince us that he understands the issues involved. Clooney strikes me as manifestly the kind of actor who does. We see him thinking, we share his thoughts, and at the end of The Descendants, we've all come to his conclusions together.”

Alexander Payne made his name as Director/Screenwriter of films such as Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002) and Sideways (2004).  George Clooney lobbied Alexander Payne unsuccessfully for a part in this latter film, being turned down by Payne on the basis that he was too big a star for a role in such an ensemble cast.

	Here's the trailer: