The Whisperers

Edith Evans - Maggie Ross
Eric Portman - Archie Ross
Nanette Newman - Girl Upstairs
Gerald Sim - Conrad
Avis Bunnage - Mrs. Noonan
Ronald Fraser - Charlie Ross
Harry Baird - Earl
Robert Russell - Andy
Kenneth Griffith - Mr. Weaver

Bryan Forbes' ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of Robert Nicolson's 1961 novel Mrs. Ross was a carefully studied portrait of an impoverished Manchester pensioner teetering on the edge of senility. The film was intended to highlight the problem of old age care but failed to spark a national debate. Dame Edith Evans gives a spirited performance in the central role which deservedly won a British Academy Award and was Oscar-nominated. There’s also good support from Eric Portman as her errant husband and Gerald Sim as the compassionate assistance board employee. Forbes' stark direction is typically over-emphatic and obvious, underlining the social conscience of the film extensively without any light relief.

Mrs Ross (Edith Evans) is an old woman with delusions of grandeur who only has her fantasies to keep her company. She believes she can hear conspirators listening to her. She receives an unexpected windfall money when crooked her son, Charlie (Ronald Frase), hides the proceeds from a robbery in her closet. She visits the government assistance office the following day to tell them the money has arrived from her late father’s estate and that she need not "lend" any more money. She also encounters swindling Mrs. Noonan (Avis Bunnage), who upon hearing of her good fortune, takes Mrs Ross to the pub and plies her with port, then back to the Noonan home at nightfall.

Once there, she is drugged with methylated spirit, robbed, and dumped in an alleyway near her home. The following morning she is found lying unconscious by a neighbour suffering from pneumonia. She enters the local hospital, and after recovery is transferred to the Greater Northern hospital where she is tested psychologically. The Assistance Board track down her errant husband Archie (Eric Portman), and prevail upon the rogue to return to his wife. But Archie quickly reverts to type; visiting a local prostitute, then becoming involved with local crooks; he runs away. Alone one again, Mrs Ross returns to her dingy flat and listens to the whisperers.