The Killing of Sister George

This movie is a heck of a lot more relevant than more recent films dealing with lesbianism -- the shallow, lame DESERT HEARTS comes to mind. Though over two hours long, TKOSG held me with little effort. The action moved freely from the studio to the apartment to the pub. And the seduction scene was totally erotic and ... well ... never mind. Was this particular scene overly long? Only to a generation raised on sex scenes which rarely last as long as it takes to cook a three-minute egg. Explicit? Grow up!

And the performances ... wow! I had no problem with the hold George had over Childie, with Beryl Reid's superior portrayal complemented perfectly by Susannah York's fragile and, at the same time, forceful Childie. I must admit, York was a bit over the top in the beginning, but I wouldn't say that if I didn't count her as one of my all-time favorite actresses. And how about Coral Browne -- she was sensational! Sublty menacing, eerily sensuous -- and when I realized this was the same woman from AUNTIE MAME and LYLA CLARE, well, I nearly fell off my chair. I love this lady!

Anyone who likes gritty, clever, slightly comical drama should see this one. The plot is simple enough - an alcoholic gay actress worried about her future in a top Coronation Street-style soap opera - but the way the film is put together is pithy without being too complex - the characterisations are brilliantly satirical, showing up the worst side of the soap opera industry and its catty, backstabbing nature. You don't find yourself feeling sorry for anyone at the end of it apart from perhaps Susannah York. Lots of London-in-the-1960s location filming and familiar faces - I'm only surprised that John Le Mesurier doesn't appear in it. In a word - absorbing. Why don't they make them like this anymore?

Robert Aldrich is a director who rarely gets the attention he deserves. Ridiculously versatile he made the fascinating Film Noir 'Kiss Me Deadly', the gothic black comedy 'Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?', and the macho "tough guys on a mission" action classic 'The Dirty Dozen' to name just three in a long career. Just to emphasize that he could do just about anything, one of the first movies he made after 'The Dirty Dozen' was 'The Killing Of Sister George'. It's hard to imagine two more different movies! George is a very English picture about a much loved soap opera star (played by Beryl Reid) who has to juggle a career crisis with a complex lesbian relationship (her lover being played by Susanna York). Reid was well known to British audiences through her TV work, especially a couple of highly popular John Le Carre adaptations. Reid originated the Sister George role on the stage and she really makes the most of it in this movie. Her performance is terrific, hilariously bitchy and also very sad and pathetic. York is also good, and the lesbian subject matter must have been very shocking for the time. It may look a little dated now, but in context it is quite sensitively handled. There are some great actors in the supporting cast, most notably Coral Browne ('Theatre Of Blood') who plays a TV producer who has her eye on York. 'The Killing Of Sister George' deserves a bigger audience. I highly recommend it and hope that anyone who enjoys it looks further into the career of the Robert Aldrich, a seriously underrated film maker!

Beryl Reid gives a no-holds-barred performance as an aging lesbian actress who's already teetering on the edge when she gets word that her character in a TV soap opera is to be killed off. She takes out her frustrations on her childlike lover (Susannah York) and a production head (Coral Browne), the two of whom eventually become intimate on their own. The script-reading sequence had me howling with laughter, and Reid's non-stop barrage of put-downs, insults, wisecracks and other hateful remarks are acidly hilarious. A surprisingly realistic sex scene near the end is pretty graphic for its time (I almost felt like looking away) and we never learn much about Browne's icy character, but the concluding scene is gut-wrenching, as is the final line of dialogue. *** from ****

While there is delicate humor here, as in the movie's satire on the twee reassurances and stereotyping of an English soap opera's portrayal of homely English village life, this movie is in the end an unsettling portrait of the human condition, of the ugliness, the uncontrollable and incendiary nature of our sexual and emotional longings and need.

I spent years wanting to see this movie, if only because of its legendary nature and Coral Browne's presence in the cast, and it's nothing like what I imagined. Given the title and all the talk in books about scenes set in a dark and intense demimondaine world of lesbian bars, I pictured some sort of police procedural about lesbians being killed by a serial killer, a Sidney Sheldon-type story.

Ostensibly a portrait of an aging actress's dying career, the heart of the picture is the competition among the characters for love, for the ruthless quest for success and the money and companionship that go with it.

There is constant sado-masochistic emotional gamesmanship here, with characters playing roles that are alternately passive and active. One character pretends to be not much more than a slip of a girl and sits by and watches as others compete for her attentions.

The sex scene in the movie, while ugly in the extreme, is vital to the film's message. (I'm amazed that this aired, even late at night, on Turner Classic Movies, so that I, thankfully, got a chance to see the movie.) Coral Browne's face, stripped of its mask of demure self-possession, exposing the animal (the monster?) that we all are at the core of our being--that's something to see. And unsettling.

I'll never particularly care for Susannah York. She'll always strike me as a bit of an over-praised, over-successful relic of the 1960s, a kind of prissy relic, but what a film, even with some longeurs. And the towering--both literally and figuratively--Coral Browne: what a presence.