Simon Moore reviews Ghost Stories: Classic Adaptations from the BBC – Volume 1…
Whistle and I’ll Come To You, 1968.
Directed by Jonathan Miller.
Starring Michael Hordern, Ambrose Coghill, George Woodbridge, Nora Gordon and Freda Dowie.
Whistle and I’ll Come To You, 2010.
Directed by Andy de Emmony.
Starring John Hurt, Gemma Jones, Lesley Sharp and Sophie Thompson.
Montague Rhodes James, better known as M.R. James, was a Mediaeval scholar and provost of Eton and King’s College. He also happened to enjoy scaring the holy shivering bejesus out of people. He wrote the short stories that are the basis for these adaptations some hundred years ago.
Don’t kid yourself that means these tales come from a more innocent time. James was an antiquarian; a student of the world’s ancient past. He knew better than most that greed and pride and vengeance were nothing new to mankind. Pride in particular takes centre stage in Whistle and I’ll Come To You (1968), one of James’ earliest and eeriest of ghost stories.
Awkward, mumbling Professor Parkin (Michael Hordern) takes a holiday from Cambridge University life in a quiet East Anglia seaside resort. Rambling along the empty dunes, Parkin comes across a forgotten cemetery, eroded away by the encroaching sea. A bone whistle protrudes from what must have once been a grave; Parkin pockets it and thinks nothing more of it.
Back in his hotel room, he remembers his odd little find and dusts it off, so that a a Latin inscription is now visible: QUIS EST HIC, QUI VENTURUS EST – “Who is this? Who is coming?” It doesn’t mean anything to him. It’s a whistle. What does one do with a whistle? Blow on it. May as well. What harm could there be?
Um, lots, actually. Before long, he gets the distinct impression of a presence, close to him. Suddenly the wind against the window sounds like somebody trying to get inside. The wide open spaces of the beaches that seemed so liberating start to disturb, even haunt Parkin. His distant, academic manner with other people that gave him such an eccentric air before now only isolates him further from any hope of help.
Shot in black and white with no background soundtrack but malevolent gusts of wind, Director Jonathan Miller strips his story of warmth and safety; he traps Parkin in a world of pitch black night and grey, featureless day. Interiors are observed through mirrors, through POV shots angling down from the ceiling, so that there is always a sense of this man being watched by some invisible force. Miller plays it out slow, forcing us to imagine the terror coming for Parkin.
James’ original story called for a young man, but Michael Hordern (then in his late 50s) is perfect as Parkin, his deep-lined face a mirror for the horrors slowly awakening in his character’s mind. For what amounts to a one-man show, Hordern, so often taking the supporting role as some officious authority, shines here as a man of rational thought worn down to a gibbering wreck, capable of nothing more than animalistic grunts and whines.
Don’t imagine you’ll be watching the same story when you move on to the next feature, Whistle and I’ll Come To You (2010). This remake wisely does away with the dry, BBC announcer-type opening narration of the ’68 version. The basic framework of James’ story is here, but crucial elements are changed, for reasons that are not immediately apparent. However, considered carefully, with all the facts and frights in mind, these changes begin to make sense.
James Parkin (John Hurt) is no longer a bachelor of the 1930s but a husband of the here and now. Leaving his beloved wife Alice (Gemma Jones) in a convalescent home, Parkin takes a holiday on the coast, reluctantly leaving Nurse Hetty (Lesley Sharp) to deal with Alice’s advanced senile dementia. Gemma Jones and those blue, blue eyes of hers have a ghostly quality all of their own. This deceptively simple scene sets the flesh creeping early on, as we observe the deathly quiet of this convalescent home, with row after row of chairs with vacant stares.
There’s a musty, washed out palette to the cinematography, full of earthy browns and faded reds. With Parkin’s wife dead to him before she’s in the grave, De Emmony lays the root of this man’s suffering before us. He teases us with the possibility that as a scientist and as a practical man, he might be strong enough to face what we know must be coming. This rational-minded, intellectual pride is precisely his undoing.
Resting a while from his beach ramble, Parkin spots an old, old wedding ring poking out of the sands. The irony obviously strikes him, as he wonders aloud to his find: “How long were you alone, waiting for someone to find you?” Inscribed around the inside of the gold band, those same words in Latin. “Who is this? Who is coming?”
John Hurt has a wonderful face for lingering doubt, and he puts it to excellent use from here on, haunted by a barely-glimpsed figure in white. It doesn’t so much pursue him so much as it roots itself deeper and deeper in Parkin’s waking and sleeping consciousness.
Parkin does not believe in ghosts, or any idea of the spirit of a person surviving the death of the body. “I have seen a body outlive the death of its personality, that is far more horrifying, I assure you.” See if you believe him by the time the ghost reveals itself in the genuinely chilling climax, a strangely more satisfying ending for the visual clues given all along the way; clues any viewer can spot but few will connect until you consider that this Parkin found a ring, not a whistle.
Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.
Originally published August 20, 2012. Updated April 10, 2018.
