As the kind of person who greatly values their privacy, I never enjoy being somebody’s houseguest. I can’t begin to imagine how I would handle having a houseguest, something I have had the good fortune to avoid thus far. I worry I would be like John Hurt in 1978’s The Shout and have Alan Bates slowly take over his house, starting with the man inviting himself in for lunch.
From there, Bates insinuates himself into Hurt’s life so thoroughly that he has taken over the house and won the heart of the man’s wife, played by Susannah York. It isn’t even like he is clever and employs complicated machinations to accomplish this. Bates instead seems to have some sort of mystical power, especially over York. He seems to have done this by stealing a buckle off one of her sandals.
This home invader also tells Hurt of a shout he was taught by an aboriginal man while he was in the outback. He can supposedly kill a man with this sound. Then again, Bates also talks of fathering multiple children with an indigenous wife there and killing each of them, so I be reluctant to believe his claims. He also talks of learning how to place a curse by pointing a bone at somebody and being able to psychically reach into somebody and steal their kidneys. And here I thought people just went in the outback to buy a didgeridoo they’ll never really learn how to play. And if you’re ever around somebody about to play that instrument for you, you are obligated to tell them, “Digeridon’t”.
Hurt is intrigued by the idea of a sound which can kill others, even if he doesn’t entirely believe Bates. And yet, given he puts cotton in his ears when Bates gives a demonstration, Hurt always doesn’t entirely disbelieve. He may survive, but a local sheepherder and his flock aren’t so lucky.
I assume Hurt is largely interested in the concept of the shout because he is a musician. Actually, he seems to be more somebody who experiments with synthesizers to try to make interesting noises. Until Bates comments the man’s “music” is garbage, I thought Hurt was supposed to be a foley artist. Some trivia for gearheads, one piece of kit he uses is an EMS VCS3, which was notably used by Pink Floyd in “On the Run” from Dark Side of the Moon. Also, as somebody who listens to a lot of synth music from the 70’s, I can tell you whatever Hurt is trying to do it, indeed, sounds like crap.
Hurt also plays organ in the local church. After services, the cobbler’s wife (Carol Drinkwater) has been playing with his organ. Given this, I felt a tad less sorry for how badly he’ll get cuckcolded by Bates. And yet, it is especially odd how quickly and thoroughly Hurt acquiesces to the man’s every demand.
All of this is wrapped around by a scene at an asylum where Bates is a patient stuck keeping score at a cricket match with staff and inmates both playing. Tim Curry is in the scorekeeping box with him, and everything we see of Bates’s time with Hurt is the tale he’s telling Curry.
Perhaps the strangest thing in this movie is seeing Curry restrained to the point of timidity. If there is one thing I have never seen Curry do in the past, it is to play “normal”. Bates instead relishes the opportunity to chew the scenery. Hurt is as much of a professional as always. York so belongs in this oddball movie that I feel like I was somehow seeing a continuation of the characters she played in films such as Robert Altman’s Images. And, like so many of the movies in which she appeared, she is very comfortable with her body. Seemingly equally comfortable in the altogether is an impossibly young Jim Broadbent as an inmate who uses the opportunity of a rained-out cricket match to strip down to his jock strap. I wasn’t expecting that.
This is a strange film of a particular kind of art house fare common to England in the late 60’s and through the 70’s. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought it was the work of Nicholas Roeg, though that is likely due mostly to the Aboriginal elements of this picture reminding me tangentially of his Walkabout.
Much like many of that director’s films, I found myself intrigued by The Shout more than I liked it. I took particular note of how it presents some imagery as a puzzle for the viewer to make their connections and correlations. Perhaps incorrectly, I don’t detect much beneath that deliberately confused surface, but those intrigued by such works as Don’t Look Now might find much to chew on here.
Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski
Starring Alan Bates, Susannah York, John Hurt
Watched on Network UK blu-ray (region B)