There could never be a great film about Stevie Smith; the poet is simply too small, silly and self-absorbed, like her work - just the kind of poetry that seems to win awards, as hers did twice.
But smallness is the strength of this film, and its economy has been praised by many. Most of the action (mainly talk, in fact) takes place in one modest suburban front parlour, between Stevie and her deeply unpoetic Yorkshire aunt, played by Mona Washbourne, who comes a little too close to caricature, and does not quite measure up to Glenda Jackson, Trevor Howard or Alec McCowen, who comprise the rest of the minimal cast. Even at that, the two males are only allowed on-board as fringe-characters, McCowen as the hopeful young suitor Freddy, doomed to disappointment, and Howard as a mystery figure, known only as The Man, presumably an ex-lover, who recites a few of her poems with deep sincerity.
These poems display little virtue (rather like a poor man's Edith Sitwell), but they reveal an unusually deep preoccupation with death, alongside a confused and childish protest against middle-class values, as deeply embedded in the aunt's character. Her coining of the phrase 'Not waving but drowning' may yet survive as her epitaph.
Jackson carries full conviction as Stevie, having to act the same person from schooldays onwards, so we don't always know what age and stage we're at. She talks as though she's still in her teens when she visits Berlin with a German boyfriend at the beginning of the Nazi era, by which time Stevie would have been into her thirties.
Meanwhile she treats death as another character in the story, apparently welcoming the certainty of his arrival, and Howard reports that she died, unable to speak, but circling one word on a sheet of paper. The word was 'Death'.
