The Killing of Sister George - 1968 film review

The Killing of Sister George is not, despite its title, a crime film, but it's a movie I much enjoyed watching as a student almost a decade after its original release and I wanted to take another look at it to see if it was as good as I thought at the time. The killing referred to is that of a character in a TV soap opera, clearly modelled on The Archers and the film, directed by Robert Aldrich, is based on a 1964 stage play written by Frank Marcus. There is a very funny 1961 episode of Hancock called 'The Bowmans', in which Tony Hancock plays another character who is being written out of a soap with a strong resemblance to The Archers and I wonder whether that gave Marcus his idea.

Whether or not it did, he made good use of it: Sister George is the work for which he is best remembered today, even though I gather that he felt the film lacked the subtlety of his play (which I've never seen). His aim was to explore a lesbian relationship between an older woman, June Buckridge, who drinks heavily and whose life bears no resemblance to that of the popular and homely character she plays, 'Sister George', and a younger woman, Alice 'Childie' McNaught. 

In the film, the two women are played by Beryl Reid and Susannah York, a contrasting pair to say the least, and both of them give superb performances. Reid is mesmeric in a rather horrible way, while York - extremely beautiful - makes the best of a strange character, whose psychology is partly explained at the end of the film, but who remains a bit of a puzzle. The satiric elements of the storyline are well done, in a screenplay by Lukas Heller (father of Zoe), although inevitably it's not as funny as 'The Bowmans'.

Coral Browne is very good as the apparently frosty BBC executive Mercy Croft, while Ronald Fraser, as a pub landlord in the soap opera, and Hugh Paddick as the hapless producer, are good value as usual. There's an explicit lesbian sex scene towards the end of the film that upset some people at the time, and the controversies about the film used to overshadow discussion of its merits. For me, it works as well now as I did when I watched it in the mid-70s.