Stevie

This is an appallingly boring film. Perhaps it was an interesting stage play...I don't know. But it doesn't work as a film because there is virtually nothing cinematic about it. It remains confined largely within the dimensions of a stage set (there is really only one set, a shabby-genteel apartment where "Stevie" (the real-life poet Stevie Smith) lives with her long-suffering aunt (played by Mona Washbourne). Stevie, you see, has problems---emotional problems, problems with her "muse," problems living with her dependent aunt, problems with lovers (one of them, Trevor Howard, bears the enigmatic name of "The Man.") And Stevie TALKS...all the time, a constant stream of arty, supposedly meaningful, but utterly self-indulgent jabber. Glenda Jackson plays "Stevie,"...she really liked talky parts, it would seem. This one fits her like a glove. She, Howard, Washbourne, and Alec McCowen are four of the finest actors Britain has produced. Yet they wallow in this mess for what seems like days (the film actually only runs a bit over the usual 90 minutes). Steer clear of this deadly dull bio-pic, unless you just can't do without the poetry and posturings of Stevie Smith, or you absolutely must see the entire "oeuvre" of Glenda Jackson, M.P.

Anyone interested in Stevie Smith, or with a taste for literary films, can't fail to appreciate the beauty of this little movie.The atmosphere created by the film is intimate & bookish, and Jackson's well-honed performance (she created the role in the stage play) conveys Stevie's vulnerability & brilliance wonderfully.

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'.

Reading the reviews and feeling like I feel, I want to keep this film alive by adding a comment here.

I saw this years ago and never forgot it. I was (and am) a Glenda Jackson fan - although we are both of age now. The story of Stevie Smith was new to me at the time. What a wonderful way to get to know her writings ! It blew me way. I've read much of her since thanks to this film. I found it sublime. Much thanks to Mona Washburn and Trevor Howard (both died in 1988), but mostly to Glenda Jackson. I wish I could see it again. Can anybody show me where to get it ? Dl or otherwise. I'm grateful that I have the vinyl LP so I can listen to it from time to time :)

For a thoughtful, literate, positive essay on the film, see Ed Hirsch in American Poetry Review (Jul/Aug 2000): 32-37: ""It's deeply fitting that the last words of the film are the words of Stevie's final poem ["Come Death (a)," read by Trevor Howard]. They fill the mind, the theater, with their faithful summons, their fatal timely music.""