Ghost Story (1974)

"a sort of cross between M. R. James and P. G. Wodehouse..."

‘Marianne Faithfull: Victorian bride…’

Sometimes, a film, despite its obvious flaws, just has that certain something— that certain je ne sais quoi. Take Stephen Weeks’ rather stylish Ghost Story (1974), a British low-budget tale of the supernatural starring Marianne Faithfull, Murray Melvin and, in a rare film appearance, Vivian MacKerrell— the real-life inspiration for Withnail & I (1987). And to add to the film’s eccentric credentials, a script co-written by the great Rosemary Sutcliff, yep, she of the Eagle of the Ninth (1954), a script described by director Stephen Weeks as a “a sort of cross between M. R. James and P. G. Wodehouse.” I first saw it on late-night television, on some obscure satellite channel, back in the early 2000s. And, although well past my bedtime, I couldn’t tear myself away— partly because the film, supposedly set in 1930s England, appeared to have been shot in the dustbowl of India, with a strange orange light (actually, thinking about it, not unlike the radioactive, tangerine glow of Cheltenham’s former street lighting), and the Victorian Gothic architecture, which although reminiscent of England— Up to a Point Lord Copper— didn’t seem quite right.

‘Murray Melvin: Oxford aesthete…’

Ghost Story (1974), I think, was Stephen Weeks’ third or fourth feature film, or at least his next film after Gawain and the Green Knight (1971), starring Sunday Bloody Sunday’s Murray Head. Weeks had this curious— but endearing— idea that India looked (or felt) more like England on film than— er, England. Or at least in the 1930s. The Blighty of the 1930s, as opposed to the Blighty of 1973: the England of economic decline and political ineptitude:

Whatever India looked like it would be a change for the audience, and perhaps have a certain ring of something— not perhaps truth, but a lack of phoniness… my dream was to be just around the corner, that I would find a place where real 1930s’ English cars drive the dusty lanes, where one can eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding or go fox-hunting or have one’s photograph taken by a photographer with a blanket over his head and a backdrop of classical columns, behind one, or even order plus-fours and have them delivered the next day in the finest tweed.

Stephen Weeks, Decaying Splendours [1979].

Marianne Faithfull: 1874 meets 1974, black and white publicity still.

Does Southern India look like England? Alas, no. No, it doesn’t. The light’s all wrong, the arid earth is red in colour, and for railway buffs, the cowcatcher’d steam locomotive ain’t right. The actors seem hot and bothered, too, and a trifle sweaty, especially Larry Dann in his tweedy plus-fours. Delhi Belly, perhaps? But then, I suspect I’m missing the point. It’s not about the look; it’s more about the feel. A sense of place. The decay gives the film a sense of otherworldliness. And it works. Sort of. And Bangalore Palace (built in the manner of Windsor Castle) is magnificent. But more of that to come…

Stephen Weeks, Decaying Splendours, BBC [1979]

Stephen Weeks is an interesting character. An enthusiast of the past: a film director, architectural conservationist, and historical novelist; and a restorer of castles, both in Wales and the Czech Republic. His search for a suitable location is chronicled in his book, Decaying Splendours, published by the BBC in 1979 and based on two radio documentaries. Weeks travels around India in search of an England Lost, and he eventually finds it: in shabby colonial hotels, decaying palaces, derelict tennis courts, graveyards and stained, mossy statues of Queen Victoria, rickety railway stations and Alpine villas, up in the hill stations. It’s a terrific book. A buy. A must for architectural romantics and lovers of decay— pride of place on my bookshelf, next to Rose Macaulay’s Pleasure of Ruins (1966), and in the event of conflagration, one of the first books to rescue from the hovel.