tomsview Somerset Maugham once made this observation about poverty: "You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer."The spirit of what he said pervades this disturbing film. No doubt this work would have to resonate more in Britain, but even 50-years later, unemployment, abandonment of the elderly, and welfare subsistence are fairly universal maladies of the Western World."The Whisperers" is not a comfortable experience. A disturbed old woman, Mrs Ross (Edith Evans), who lives alone is slowly losing her grip on reality, she lives in impoverished circumstances and is dependent on welfare. When she accidentally comes into a little money, she is preyed on like a wounded animal in the jungle. Even her son, Charlie (Ronald Fraser), and her estranged husband, Archie (Eric Portman), take advantage of her.This is more than a performance by Edith Evans; when it's over, you believe Mrs Ross existed.She lives in a society where ruthless opportunists abound. However, the story is not devoid of decent people; her young neighbour and especially the understanding Mr Conrad (Gerald Sim) at the welfare office redeem what would be a very jaundiced look at modern life.Bryan Forbes was a man of many talents: actor, writer and director, but this film would have to be at the pinnacle of his achievements. The film boasts brilliant photography and real locations. You can almost smell the rising damp and cheap tobacco, and feel the mud splattered on your shoes - not to mention the edge of the cut-throat razors in one disturbing scene; powerful imagery in the impressive tradition of British 'kitchen sink dramas'.The film has a score by John Barry. Although I didn't see this film until 50 years after it was made, I knew the theme far earlier from a Barry compilation album, and always wanted to see the film it went with. This was before Barry settled into that languid style when many of his scores seemed interchangeable. During the 60's and 70's he was the one of the most experimental composers. He used a harpsichord here in a small-scale work, which suited the poignancy and bleakness of the story.Although dramatised, the film shows a slice of modern life, but from a rather dispassionate point-of-view; it hits home all the more because of it.

mija288 Just watched this for the first time. The description didn't do the movie justice. It advertised as a thriller, and yes, I thought it was going to take that turn more than a few times. First time was when Maggie's thug of a son showed up. The second was right after she was "befriended" at the welfare by the woman sitting next to her. The third and final time was when her waste of a husband Archie got his feet back in her door. I didn't get Margaret or her story until the end of the movie. The finale explained the beginning. We see her back at the dole office in need of money. We see her back at the free reading room warming her foot on the heater pipe. We see her back at the church service singing hymns. The last scene finds her making her tea and reading her paper. When did she start to collect papers and reading materials to "study?" Was it during her marriage or after? Remember how Archie got so upset when he came home after a day of "looking for a job" (placing bets at the sporting office) and there was no paper from the morning for him to "study?" She returned from hospital to find her flat spic-n-span and then Archie comes home; a new start? I think she felt it was. Notice how she kept up the house; found order. It wasn't about happiness or love or even companionship. He hurt her and that wasn't forgotten, but it could be lived with. It was about his physical presence. This was about some lifting of the loneliness, and the lesser need for fantasy. The idea that there would be someone within the walls filled the space the voices used to take up. I wish my thoughts were more clear and I was better at explaining, but I really want to see this movie again, or should I say, I want to watch the character of Margeret again. This is a character that's going to be hard to forget.

mukava991 This grim tale about the loneliness and vulnerability of old age, set in what must be the most rundown section of Manchester, manages to touch us in an unsentimental manner. Its chief quality is the crisply photographed slum in which it largely takes place, like the last remains of the 19th century surviving into the post-War 20th. The protagonist, Margaret Ross, played by the stately Edith Evans, lives in a cluttered ground floor flat in this urban wasteland of rain-slicked cobblestone streets without cars or pedestrians, but an abundance of crumbling brick walls, gutted buildings and stray cats. The opening credit sequence of grey rooftops under rainy skies is particularly striking.At home she looks through newspapers, eats bread with honey, sips tea and listens to radio as her sink faucet drips, drips, drips. She constantly hears voices (the "whisperers" of the title) and turns up the radio to drown them out. When the upstairs neighbors, an interracial couple with an infant, pound on the floor in protest, she pounds back on the ceiling with a broomstick and is showered with bits of plaster. (We see the bald patch from where the plaster has fallen but the absence of other patches means that she has never before banged on the ceiling; this strand of the story would have been more convincing if more of the ceiling was similarly defaced.) When not talking to the imagined voices, she spends her solitary life visiting the library where she surreptitiously warms her feet on the heating pipes, collecting welfare from a local government office where she makes frequent references to her good breeding and high-class family connections, listening to sermons at a local evangelical storefront chapel, and tending to household chores which seem to consist mostly of emptying large quantities of dust, coal ashes and bottles and cans from which she derives most of her nourishment.Evans brings dignity to the role but somehow she does not seem to be the right actress for the part. Margaret Ross is a woman of humble origins. Evans is a thoroughbred. True, she does claim that she married beneath herself, but that would be putting it mildly. Still, she has the acting skills to keep us entertained, and she gets brilliant support from the secondary players: Eric Portman as her surly husband, Avis Bunnage as a predatory welfare mom and Gerald Sim as a welfare clerk add a great deal to the overall presentation. Leonard Rossiter, too, shows up for a strong few minutes as a government official. And John Barry supplies a melancholy but unobtrusive musical score.Evans got an Oscar nomination for this performance. Fair enough. But I think Gerry Turpin should have also gotten one for his beautiful cinematography.

Martin Bradley This may be the bleakest of all the 'kitchen sink' movies, (it is unremittingly gloomy) and Bryan Forbes' picture of the British Welfare State in the 1960's has an almost Dickensian feel to it. But then Forbes always seemed to work better with subjects which didn't lend themselves to levity.It's the story of Mrs Ross, a pensioner living on her own and beset by the voices one hears when one is so lonely and in the part Edith Evans is quite magnificent. If you think Evans too patrician for the part of an old woman living in a working class district of an industrial, mostly derelict and rain-sodden city, she does point out that 'she married beneath her' and since she is hardly ever off the screen this is a real tour-de-force, (and she was nominated for the Oscar for it as well as winning a whole slew of other awards). There are also first-rate supporting performances from the wonderful Avis Bunnage and the always consistently reliable Gerald Sim and Eric Portman, terrific as her errand husband). Unfortunately the film's sub-plots involving stolen money and some gangsters seems superfluous and gives the film a somewhat melodramatic air and its down-beat mood meant it was never a popular success and it is hardly ever revived. But seek it out, all the same; it is certainly worth seeing.