{"id":5321,"date":"2015-02-18T06:24:24","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T05:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=5321"},"modified":"2015-02-24T02:01:18","modified_gmt":"2015-02-24T01:01:18","slug":"the-nightcomers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2015\/02\/18\/the-nightcomers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nightcomers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Nightcomers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> DVD + Blu-ray

\nRelease date:<\/B> 23 February 2015

\nDistributor:<\/B> Network Distributing

\nDirector:<\/B> Michael Winner

\nWriter:<\/B> Michael Hastings

\nCast:<\/B> Marlon Brando, Stephanie Beacham, Thora Hird

\nUK 1971

\n92 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018Marlon, you\u2019re a great actor. I\u2019m not a great director. Do what you like.\u2019 This was supposedly how Michael Winner began his unlikely collaboration with the king of the method players. Brando was in the midst of a severe career slump, from which he would only escape with the double whammy of Last Tango in Paris<\/i> and The Godfather<\/i> the following year. The Nightcomers<\/i> marks the last gasp of Brando\u2019s wilderness years, which had stretched through pretty much the entire previous decade (fascinating though some of those films maudits<\/i> are).<\/p>\n

The idea of a prequel to Henry James\u2019s The Turn of the Screw<\/i> is an odd one for any studio seeking commercial success: Jack Clayton\u2019s adaptation, The Innocents<\/i><\/a>, had appeared exactly 10 years earlier, and despite being an artistic masterpiece it hadn\u2019t done terribly well at the box office. Too subtle, too intelligent, too defiantly non-generic. Only the last quality really applies to Winner\u2019s movie, which is even more of an odd duck than the eerie Cinemascope ghost story it both follows and foreshadows.<\/p>\n

Giving no acknowledgement to the 1961 classic, The Nightcomers<\/i> nevertheless starts with a snatch of \u2018Willow Waly\u2019, the folk song\/nursery rhyme sung in spooky solo over the credits of Clayton\u2019s film. This is promptly followed by a jarring crash zoom, neatly encapsulating the clash of temperaments that makes up the film\u2019s style: half literate and dreamy, half leering and vulgar, rarely very successful.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a shame, since Robert Paynter\u2019s moody, muddy photography is beautiful and atmospheric, making something evocative from the mixture of dim, wintry daylight and dancing grain. It\u2019s just that everything Winner makes him do with his camera, save the wide shots, is rather trashy. Many of the scenes might have been rescued, since Winner is at least shooting a decent range of coverage, but he insisted on cutting the film himself (using the admittedly hilarious pseudonym of Arnold Crust Jnr), and he has absolutely no sense of rhythm, mood, drama, character, or any form of continuity beyond the most basic \u2013 making sure the actors are standing in the right places. It\u2019s not that the props or costumes jump around when you\u2019re not looking, it\u2019s that none of the shots build to a total effect, and the actors often seem to be staring into space rather than at their off-screen co-stars (which is probably the case, given Brando\u2019s tendency to take off whenever not required for a close-up).<\/p>\n

Brando himself is\u2026 sort of good? It\u2019s quite an extreme version of an Irish accent he\u2019s doing, but it\u2019s at least less goofy than Orson Welles\u2019s in The Lady from Shanghai<\/i>, still the gold standard in rogue brogues. Trying to suggest an alluring, poetic psychopath, Brando is slightly hampered by his excess years and pounds, though Winner, whose eye was usually unflattering in the extreme, protects both his star and his audience by framing out the Brando bare belly (which was back under control, briefly, in time for his sexual exploits of 72). <\/p>\n

The script by Michael Hastings riffs off the clues provided in James\u2019s novella, but actually rewrites fictional history to create a more (melo)dramatic story, in which Brando\u2019s lusty gardener corrupts both nanny Miss Jessel (luscious, warm Stephanie Beacham) and the two children under her charge. Touching on the themes of Forbidden Games<\/i> and Lord of the Flies<\/i>, the movie slowly turns its emotionally damaged children into horror movie monsters, complete with an ending that strongly implies that classic horror movie trope, \u2018It\u2019s all going to happen again!\u2019 In fact, readers of James and viewers of Clayton will be aware that things are not as simple as that, and certainly neither artist intended for their uncanny children to be seen as deranged killers.<\/p>\n

Hastings\u2019s dialogue is often smart, strange and literate, suggesting the alien mindset of the Victorian era with its odd, stilted formality. This gets pushed further into the realms of the bizarre by the kids\u2019 line readings, and the very particular acting style of Thora Hird as the housekeeper (it\u2019s a style a less charitable critic might call \u2018reading it out\u2019, but I love Thora and would never put her down like that). Brando seems genuinely amused by his unlikely co-star.<\/p>\n

What will likely interest viewers most in this age of shifty grades of fey, is the sex, which includes all the unsafe bondage techniques and dubious consent issues people seem to want nowadays. The kinky stuff gets dealt with pretty quickly, but is fairly strong for the time. Winner\u2019s melting it together in those lap dissolves reserved for tasteful sex scenes back in the day gives it a safely old-fashioned quality, though, which explains why this wasn\u2019t seen as taboo-busting in the same way as Last Tango<\/i>. Though in both films Brando degrades his partner by making her repeat lines after him and makes reference to pigs, so I guess we can be fairly sure that\u2019s what he was genuinely into. Future biographers take note.<\/p>\n

David Cairns<\/I><\/B><\/p>\n

Watch the original trailer:<\/b><\/p>\n