Séance on a Wet Afternoon

Plot

Myra Savage (Kim Stanley) is a medium who holds séances in her home. Her husband Billy (Richard Attenborough), unable to work because of asthma and cowed by Myra's domineering personality, assists in her séances. Myra's life and psychic work are dominated by her relationship with the spirit of her son Arthur, who died at birth.

At Myra’s insistence, Billy kidnaps the young daughter (Judith Donner) of a wealthy couple (Mark Eden and Nanette Newman), confining her in a room in the Savage home dressed as a hospital ward. Myra impersonates a nurse to deceive the girl into believing she is hospitalised. Myra insists she is "borrowing" the girl to demonstrate her psychic abilities to the police in helping them find her. Although they ask for a £25,000 ransom, they plan to return the money with the girl after Myra has become famous for helping find her.

Myra's plan goes awry as her unsteady mental health begins to fray. She tells Billy to kill the girl, and he takes her into the woods and leaves her body under a tree.

When the police ask Myra to conduct a séance to help them find the missing girl – as she had hoped they would – she breaks down during the séance and reveals, as if in a psychic trance, what she and Billy have done. Billy tells the police where he hid the ransom money and reveals that he did not kill the girl, but left her unconscious where she would be found by scouts camping nearby.

Casting

According to Jon Krampner's biography Female Brando: The Legend of Kim Stanley, Forbes and Attenborough had initially encountered difficulty in casting the role of Myra. Deborah Kerr and Simone Signoret were originally approached for the part, but both actresses turned down the role.

Forbes and Attenborough then contacted Kim Stanley, an American theatre and television actress whose previous film work was limited to starring in the 1958 feature The Goddess and providing the uncredited opening and closing narration for the 1962 adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. Attenborough was later quoted as stating that Stanley was the best choice, noting that the "complexity of dramatic impression vital to the credibility of Myra was hard to find. Also an intellectual ability to follow and understand the character. I didn’t believe Simone (Signoret) could convey, as Kim did, the otherworldliness which this woman inhabited in her private fantasies."

After completing Séance on a Wet Afternoon, Stanley did not appear in another film until Frances in 1982. She received Oscar nominations for both films.

Cast

Reception and awards

Critical reaction in the British and American media was overwhelmingly strong. The London Express called the film "superbly atmospheric" while The Sunday Telegraph dubbed it "compassionate, intelligent and absorbing." The New York Herald Tribune called Séance on a Wet Afternoon "the perfect psychological suspense thriller and a flawless film to boot" while The New York Times stated "it isn’t often you see a melodrama that sends you forth with a lump in your throat, as well as a set of muscles weary from being tense for nigh two hours."

Kim Stanley won the Best Actress Award from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review. She was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Actress (she lost to Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins) and the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress (she lost to Anne Bancroft in The Pumpkin Eater). Richard Attenborough won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor, while Forbes’ screenplay and Gerry Turpin’s cinematography received nominations. Forbes' script won the Writers Guild of Great Britain Award and the 1965 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Remakes

Séance on a Wet Afternoon was remade in 2000 as the Japanese language horror film Seance (Japanese: 降霊, Kōrei), directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. An opera of the same name based on the film, created by Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz, had its world premiere on 26 September 2009, at the Granada Theater at Opera Santa Barbara in California.