Directed by Kevin Billington, who sadly died last December, Voices is a definite curio. A beautiful young couple with a beautiful young son are on a boating holiday. Everyone looks so lovely, the first scene may be mistaken for some sort of commercial for clean living. The husband and wife are plainly in love and there is a palpable sense of devotion to their young son, David. While wife prepares food, hubby and son go off and explore. They are moored next to a weir with loud and vaguely menacing white waterfalls everywhere. After lunch, this beautiful couple then decide, against all of 20th (and 21st) century sanity, to have sex on board while their 6 year-old plays outside, unattended. Yes, he has a life jacket on but the weir’s water is so loud that the couple would not hear his cries if he got into trouble and neither would they hear a splash. This clean living commercial just suddenly turned into an introduction to Mr. and Mrs. Criminally Irresponsible. I just wonder if the loss of a young son could have been brought about without his parents seeming to be so stupidly reckless. Finding David’s life vest discarded on the ground, the two run around calling his name out to no avail. A police search turns up nothing and we are left to assume that the boy died.

Sometime later, the bereaved parents, Robert and Claire, are driving in their sports car on a fogbound country road. We get flashbacks to Claire and her making several attempts to end her life. Intercut (asking quite a lot of the audience I felt on a first time viewing) are scenes of failed suicide attempts to the arrival at a mental asylum. The sound of the windscreen wipers is a nice aural clue that we are seeing flashbacks and that the country drive is our ‘present’. After avoiding a collision in the fog, the couple start making their way through the woodland on foot to an old deserted country house left to Claire by her aunt. And then something utterly extraordinary happens at 18 minutes and 28 seconds. In the extra feature Voices From The Past, I find out from the technical producer, Michael Brooke, that “That shift in quality is an intended effect.” Say what?! We go from world class cameraman Geoffrey Unsworth’s superlative 35mm film shooting to TV studio based standard definition video, a format we will now stay in for the bulk of the running time.

My mother, bless her, could never tell the difference on TV between film and video. I used to stand by the screen and ask her to note the different quality of the news anchor in a studio being videotaped and the 16mm film insert of the actual story. She kept saying “It’s all just pictures!” I was editing film at the time for the BBC and was astonished at what the lay person accepts as quality. But hearing that this switch from 4K quality film to 480i video was “…intended,” makes me want to ask the director “Why?” Sadly, as I said, he’s not with us anymore. So Kevin Billington intended people to be faintly or sharply aware that they were suddenly watching a TV studio-bound production for an hour, 8 minutes and 8 seconds before ending the film with more 35mm. Like Hemmings and Hunnicutt, the formats are also uneasy bedfellows. It’s not like the film was intended for TV. The quality drop was intended to be scanned onto film to make the prints for distribution. I simply do not get it. It’s that word “intended”. Was that intention purely budgetary? Or did the characters step into another world at that point but having seen the film twice now, the real point of the change to that world would have been the last moments of driving and the walking through the woods to arrive at the house, surely. Apologies if this is confusing but I’m tip toeing around a spoiler here so am trying to keep things a little vague. One of the delights seeing an older film show up on Blu-ray is the reacquaintance of detail you’d only have seen on a cinema screen. With Voices, as the director intended, we are treated to the high definition format showcasing quality that cannot rise above standard definition. Ouch. I will stay flummoxed until I get further information.

The couple dig in with a few supplies and Claire starts to hear faint voices, children laughing and suchlike. There is an element of unease that creeps in but never creeps you out. Robert lights a few lanterns and struts around a clearly lit set with a hint of more light falling on wherever he walks but it irked me that the lanterns were essentially superfluous. In fact they serve as props so it looks like Hemmings is actually doing something. So for the next hour, Claire starts to doubt her own mental stability based on sightings of Victorian children and her past struggles with mental health. The ‘ghosts’ are never given any context as to who they are or why they are here. And crucially the director isn’t interested in making them in any way frightening. Robert denies seeing or hearing her visions or ghosts and seems to simply endure his wife’s imminent grief fueled breakdown. She admits visiting a medium and hearing David’s voice. Irrational versus rational with a politically inconvenient division personified by a woman and a man respectively. It’s a testament to star power that Hemmings and Hunnicutt hold our attention as their relationship crumbles. More ghosts appear and finally Robert admits that he sees them too…

Voices’ stage play origins are not exactly hidden from view. To all intents and purposes the film is a two hander and while there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s not as cinematic as perhaps it could have been under different stewardship. The coverage while in the studio set is classic TV drama with that awful severe burn out and streaking that naked flames cause being shot on video. It may not be the case any longer (digital capturing may have solved that problem) but film used to have an astonishing exposure range but on video you had to expose very carefully so as not to burn out the lighter areas of the frame.

As a drama Voices is intriguing but like other films with the same subject matter, it can’t quite compete despite it being one of the very first out of the gate tackling this subject on screen. I’m very glad to have seen it and Hemmings and Hunnicutt are always good value.

As mentioned ad nauseum in the main review, pristinely restored 35mm is used as a recording medium for the opening section and the closing sequence. The rest was shot in standard definition video. I will not bleat on about this anymore. The celluloid film looks lovely, clean, good contrast levels and punchy colour. The video looks like a 70s TV studio shot series. Not good.

The original mono soundtrack is perfectly fine with no issues with hearing dialogue and the lush orchestral score by Richard Rodney Bennet is faithfully reproduced.

There are new and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

Audio commentary with writers Barry Forshaw and Kim Newman (2022)
First off is a strong defence from both men of the film’s originality. It’s somewhat in the shadow of Don’t Look Now which of course came after Voices with one of many similarities being the death of a child that kickstarts the film. But the original idea and theme of the drama go right back to the 30s. Newman’s beyond encyclopaedic knowledge of his genre and beyond is staggering as usual. Forshaw leaps in and both men are very compatible. There is a sense that Forshaw is playing the straight guy to Newman’s inexhaustible torrent of information. They cover the careers of the two leads and feature extensive examples of the same genre elements that so many more well-known productions have pushed front and centre. The idea of movie ghosts and how to define them enlivens the track with ten movies a second as examples. Translating a stage play into a film comes up as does the director’s reticence at making his story scary, being slightly ‘above’ the material. What’s refreshing here is that Newman is not afraid to point out the film’s weaknesses. This is an entertaining and informative commentary.

Wide Boys (2022): film historian Vic Pratt charts the ups and downs of John Daly and David Hemmings’ production company, Hemdale (17’ 45”)
A mid-shot and closer shot of Mr. Pratt (love the shirt) as he takes us through the remarkable story of Hemdale Films. True to say, I knew almost nothing about Hemdale despite the name being familiar and its story is a fascinating one. It’s only just occurred to me that the company name is half Hemmings and a version of Daly. I had to do a video presentation recently and self-directing is hard. It’s the eyelines that are most difficult because you can’t read something and address the lens directly without an autocue. Mr. Pratt has the same issue but it’s not a problem as the story is a great one.

Mon Brave! (2022): filmmaker Peter Crane recalls his personal and professional relationship with Hemmings (7’ 26”)
This is delightful. A man remembers his friend who died in 2003 at the relatively early age of 62. Mr. Crane was a TV director who had to rely on Hemmings to get a complex shot done in one take because of time restrictions at LAX. That’s a lovely way to start a friendship. The title ‘Mon Brave!’ was Hemming’s exhortation when he saw his mucker, Peter.

Voices from the Past (2022): a look at the challenges of restoring Voices (3’ 39”)
At last, an extra on the restoration process. I wonder if Voices was unusual to make three black and white CMY 35mm masters to prolong the life of the celluloid itself. Over time, colours fade from negative stock. If it was unusual, it strikes me as being even more unusual for a movie with over an hour of standard definition video… That aspect is brought up and discussed here too and where I learned that it was intentional.

Image gallery: promotional and publicity material
Here we have 5 black and white production shots, 10 in colour and the third of the colour ones is a still of Gayle Hunnicutt in a high necked nightdress sitting on a bed holding a bottle of champagne. The shot has been ‘flopped’ so the writing on the bottle is mirrored. And I’ve racked my mind but have to report that this must have come from a different production unless this is from a cut scene. The booklet does explain that actor David Warbeck was credited as ‘The Lover’ but his scene was cut. Are these two aspects connected? The publicity material features full cast and crew, a production story, a synopsis, biographical detail on both stars, director and producer. Finally, there’s the garish and slightly misleading artwork for the poster.

Limited edition exclusive 36-page booklet featuring a new essay by Julian Upton, archival interviews with actors Hemmings and Gayle Hunnicutt, a look at the source play, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
Scenes from a Marriage by Julian Upton goes straight in with the connections with Don’t Look Now and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? As such there are overlaps with some of the commentary. Upton charts the disintegration of the stars’ marriage suggesting the acting together may enable them to act out their troubles. But the very thing that makes Hemmings attractive is the quality that drives him to womanise. And being at the very heart of 60s swinging London and a film star, I’d imagine his head was turned often. Hemmings and Hunnicutt: Acting, Directing and Divorce features an interview with Hemmings in 1973 in which he talks mostly about his ambitions as a director. The Texas newspaper The Fort Worth Star is the source of a transatlantic call with Hunnicutt, all quiet on any divisions in the marriage. The Mansfield News - Journal gives us the skinny on the marriage via the producer Robert Enders. Adapting Voices gives us a glimpse of the original playwright’s intentions for a production and how the adaptation writers George Kirgo and Robert Enders changed certain aspects for the feature. You have to remember the original was a one-act play. Those need a lot of work to flesh out over a 90 minute movie. Critical Response… Hmm, I didn’t think this was going to be pleasant. The original play production is roasted by Clive Barnes in The New York Times. Richard Combs of the Monthly Film Bulletin was withering noting that there was ‘a wan attempt’ of ‘bleaching out the colour’ thereby hinting at the twist. He’s talking about the video insert. The Guardian’s Derek Malcolm trashes it in three sentences. Apparently Italy was the kindest to Voices which then became a TV staple. Ah, a happy ending.

Unique in British cinema for using both film and video as a recording medium, Voices is an effective two-hander between a husband and wife dealing with grief and suicidal depression. It doesn’t hurt that the married actors were having relationship trouble at the time. Its supernatural elements were never designed to scare and similar films dealing with similar issues will take the sting out of the story (of course those films were made way after 1973). But it’s well performed if a bit stagey indoors and how affected you will be by the dénouement relies on how many films of this ilk you’ve seen before.