The Killing of Sister George (1968)
By Jeremy Breneman and Eric Grigs | September 18, 2020
NEGLECTED FILM REDEMPTION
a series of conversations about forgotten and under-the-radar cinema.
The Killing of Sister George depicts the mad unraveling of June Buckridge, star of the highly rated British soap Applehurst, who becomes increasingly paranoid about her character Sister George being written off the popular show.
Eric: You sure picked a worthy follow up for round two! I’m struck at how relevant Sister George is for 2020. It’s illustrative of what happens when a confluence of crushing external forces beats down on people, making them act out in erratic, loud, and inappropriate ways. It makes me question whether we ourselves are the cause of our own downfall or is everyone actually out to get us? Am I going crazy?
Jeremy: I don’t think you are at all! Let’s look at June Buckridge (a.k.a. George), played by the marvelous British thespian Beryl Reid. She’s found comfort in playing this “everywoman” role on the TV soap. There is nothing threatening about Sister George. She’s truly the “comfort food” in the buffet of society. And really, June is living a life not divorced from that, in a modest flat and creating a family of her own with Susannah York, with all kinds of Oedipal underpinnings naturally. Yet, don’t you get a sense that as much as she clings to it, June feels trapped in the “comfortable” role she portrays on the screen? June is essentially closeted. So what does she do? She molests a nun in a cab, of course! Can you imagine a more profound kicking down of the door? I think that’s the turning point for June. She can’t go back. Neither can we. So I do sense some 21st century relevance there. And we seem to view protest today as a deadly sin, at least from the view of conformists and dictators. Oh, how rich!
Eric: This is certainly one of this first mainstream movies to feature lesbian characters prominently in the lead roles. And while I wouldn’t say the characters here are presented as positive and well adjusted, I think Robert Aldrich shows them in a straightforward way—without resorting to tragedy or punishment because of their gayness. That approach may really be what earned its scandalous reputation and initial X rating (much later reduced to an R), aside from the long seduction scene that raised eyebrows and conservative hackles at the time of its release.
Jeremy: You are right, the queerness of the characters in this film does not necessarily imply doom.
Eric: The lesbian bar scene at the actual Gateways club in London with the female band in blue dresses and mod haircuts was so inviting—at least for homos of our generation in the Western world—perfectly capturing the undergroundness of it all against a community’s tight-knit feel; that exact mixture of closetedness and openness of decades ago. And I may never recover from Laurel and Hardy drag! Genius.
Jeremy: The Laurel and Hardy drag was certainly a hoot! What I loved about that particular scene was it’s sense of inclusion. While the lesbians depicted in the film mix and mingle in the underground scene, there is that reminder of the mainstream embrace of that crowd-pleasing duo. It’s a reminder that yes, we are “here among you” so to speak. And in the case of Beryl Reid playing a soap actress, what could be anymore “in your living room with you” than that?
In the early, pre-rating years of Hollywood there were a handful of lesbian depictions. I think of Shirley MacLaine in William Wyler’s haunting and rather chilling The Children’s Hour from just about 6 years prior. That film is so full of doom and gloom, it can’t breathe. But The Killing of Sister George gives us characters who seemingly live (and destroy) on their own terms. I kind of see June as almost an early queer heroine.
Eric: At the outset, I found George abrasive, manipulative, and unsympathetic, but that changed as the film progressed. Aldrich did a great job portraying her as the proverbial rat backed into a corner. What else could she do as her world crumbled around her?
Jeremy: Speaking of destroying, can we talk a bit of Coral Browne in this film?
Eric: Yes, Coral Browne! I may love her steely performance best. She’s the perfect opposing force for Reid’s character. Unflappable decorum versus unhinged behavior. All their energies directed at controlling others and shaping the world around them to match their view. June’s TV character is so put together on screen, but in real life she barrels her way through life like a cannonball, screaming and sniping to get what she wants, always on her own terms. Coral’s character Mercy is measured, controlled, yet far more effective at gaining the upper hand. Her jabs are not overt like June’s outbursts of thrown tea scones, but rather underhanded ones like when she “compliments” June’s brass horses collection by saying “oh how useful!” My favorite: saying that Sister George’s TV death scene “coincides with road safety week, which we know you care so much about.”
Jeremy: I’ll be honest, I actually found the character of Mercy absolutely grotesque from the start. Of course she gets some of the best quips as you mentioned. I just never felt an ounce of sympathy for her. She was the black widow spider from the beginning for me. On the other hand, I felt great sympathy for June throughout. She was screeching and shrill because she knew she had everything to lose and I could relate to that. June was trying to hold on to the facade of Sister George because it afforded her a connection to acceptance by society. I found it difficult to not abide by her clawing because it was truly all she really had. I might be overstating that but then again, probably not.
Eric: True, who really is the villain here? Exhibit A: the end scene, talk about devil in a red dress! It’s only here, after being caught letting her guard down and seducing Alice away from June, that Mercy attacks verbally and directly on June’s level. “Furthermore, if you lose your girl, it’s because you are a dreary, inadequate, drunken old bag!”
Jeremy: I think the seduction scene at the end of the picture is one of the most psychologically horrifying moments I’ve seen on film...and I’ve seen a lot. It’s so expertly staged by Aldrich. It deserves a place among his finest work with an actor. Coral is absolutely venomous. Susannah York as the “fly” is heart breaking.
Eric: You’ve convinced me. Mercy was quite a black widow type. Her name and demeanor are a cruel irony that she may seem to be here to help George, but alas she has arrived on the scene to systematically take it all away from her.
Jeremy: I love that Bette Davis campaigned for the role of Mercy Croft. For once, I am actually quite satisfied she didn’t get the role. Coral Browne’s command of this character has a level of restraint I don’t feel Davis could have matched. All that aside, I am sure she was the last actress Robert Aldrich wanted to work with again. Anyone up on queer history knows the story behind that relationship! Interestingly, Coral Browne was later married to one of Bette Davis few Hollywood chums, Vincent Price. At the time he was taking his bite out of the horror genre. I can only imagine the pillow talk between the two about Bette.
What were your thoughts of the relationship between the doll collecting Alice and the much older June? I often wonder if the original playwright was thinking of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland when he named that character. She really does fall down a rabbit hole of both delights and terrors!
Eric: That’s also a good observation of Alice, the childish ingenue, trying to find her footing in an upside-down world, stuck taking abuse from her lover. Speaking of names, how interesting that June has taken to people referring to her as her soap star character’s name in her daily life? She wanted to be known as that good, “normal” person—and obviously struggling to keep up that appearance.
Nowadays it’s almost required for main characters to be anti-heroes. Flawed, dark, conflicted, making bad choices—but still we root for them. Her journey is of a much more modern template. So I’m not sure why I was so closed off to her to begin with and had to be won over by June’s breakdown. Maybe it was the early on act of making Alice eat her cigar butts (much more shocking to me than the seduction finale) and the sudden turnabout where Alice reclaims her power—if only for a moment—by pretending to enjoy the humiliating contrition? Everything for me hinges on that one line from June: “once you spoil it you can never make it work again!” It was a gut punch for me that I am still thinking about days later.
Jeremy: That line seems to reverberate through quite a few Robert Aldrich pictures. I think so many of his female characters seem to exist in their own universes, only to have them raided and plundered. There are shades of Charlotte Hollis in “Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte” and Baby Jane Hudson in his masterwork “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” It’s as if Robert Aldrich himself was touched by that spoilage in his career as a director. Maybe that informed the characters and scripts he seemed to attach himself to toward the twilight of his career.
Eric: I do believe you’re right—there’s a thread of such palpable loss in all the Aldrich films you mention. Along with events in life that drive one to madness because the uncertainty of what is real and what is all in your head. June is following right along in the footsteps of Baby Jane and Charlotte. During her final destructive rampage of the television studio, she realizes “even the bloody coffin’s a fake!”
Jeremy: As a director, I think Robert Aldrich was quickly becoming disillusioned with his Hollywood career. By the late 60s and early 70s it was quite clear he was growing more and more pessimistic about the business aspect of film. In his other project of the same year, MGM’s The Legend of Lylah Clare, the women in that film seem to go past “the point of no return.” He cast the luminous Kim Novak in her return to feature films. I’m sure to a certain extent, she felt “left behind” by the studio system who created her. It’s really fascinating how The Killing of Sister George shares that theme as well.
Don’t you also kind of always wonder “what’s next?” And isn’t it interesting how the women in this film easily overshadow the men? Who were the male co-stars really? They almost seem insignificant! Where are these kinds of films in today’s Hollywood? It’s easy to forget, this was a Hollywood film starring British leads! Even though filmed mostly in the UK, this came right out of Hollywood. Isn’t it rather amusing that the Walt Disney Company actually owns this film in 2020?
Eric: Somehow I don’t think it’s going to make its way onto Disney+! I suspect it’s going to be locked in the Disney vault from now on. You can forget about: “Kids, instead of Frozen tonight, I’ve got a special treat—it’s Disney’s The Killing of Sister George!”
So have we covered it all? From the top of the world in Applehurst to the bottom of the valley in being offered the role voicing a cow puppet on a children’s show? Is there’s anything left in this old gal, before we send her out to pasture?
Jeremy: Poor June I think comes to terms with her realization that it’s the end of things. At least she can laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
Eric: Some days this year, I’m right there with George, giving life one big, final “Moooo!”
This movie has been recently restored with a new 4K scan from original elements, now available from Kino Lorber.
The gods of pop history smiled upon Jeremy Breneman and Eric Grigs when they crossed paths online, and they have been obsessing together over obscure curiosities ever since. The first entry in this discussion series revisited Hilda Crane.