The Whales of August

Written by David Perry

Directed by Lindsay Anderson At the USA Nickolodeon

"IT'S BEEN ages since I last saw you," I said to the figures on the screen at the opening moments of The Whales of August. The actors were all familiar, but from bygone eras. The last film I had seen starring Lillian Gish was made before the advent of talking pictures, and Bette Davis's heyday passed long before I was born. Although I had seen Vincent Price regularly as the host of PBS's Mystery, he too had faded from the movie screen.

Now all these actors have returned from early retirement. They are back on the screen--and with brilliant color and sound. It is amazing that this film was ever made, but it is a good thing it was. Though Whales suffers from a sappy plot, its message is truly touching.

It is summer in Maine, August to be exact, and two sisters are spending their summer breathing fresh air and reminiscing about their lives. Their attitudes couldn't be more different. Sarah (played by Gish) happily remembers her past, but she does not live in it. Her sister Libby (Davis), on the other hand, whom age has blinded, is bitter about the tricks life has played on her. She expected her marriage to be like the mating of swans--a lifelong affair--but life fooled her. "She was always a difficult woman, even under the best of circumstances," one character tells Sarah during the film, and now that she has grown old, Libby has become "intolerable."

She does not even want to live anymore. When her sister wants to have a picture window installed at the summer house, Libby tells her, "We're too old for new things." She even has nightmares about death coming to get her and she wants her sister to go with her.

But Sarah is not ready to join her. "You can die if you want," the octogenarian says, "but I am not ready." Indeed she's not. She has to visit with Tisha, a friend of 50 years, and maybe start a little romance with Mr. Maranov, a vestige of the Russian nobility who has, since the Russian Revolution, spent his life visiting friends. He's a gentleman, as Tisha puts it "the last of the cavaliers, and rich, as in idle."

Sarah finds him charming, Tisha condescends to like him, but Libby--well, how could she like someone who she fears might take her sister away from her?

Price plays the part of Maranov with, as Libby might say, the grace of a swan, but his Russian accent is unabashedly horrible. But Price's soothing voice is almost enough to forgive him his inconsistent and unconvincing Russian lilt, as is the charming smile he beams at the screen.

For her part, Gish proves that she can work as well in sound films as in silent ones. Gish creates a likeable woman of amazing stamina, if ordinary intellect. This is an achievement, considering the script she's given--she has to talk to a picture and act obsessed with the whales she hopes to see off the coast (they predict the coming of fall).

But it is Davis who steals the scene. Maybe she just has a better role. But she almost makes you believe she is blind. And her acid comments add a sharp edge to an innocuous plot.

Whales is filled with failed motifs and odd touches--like the clothes the characters wear, which are hopelessly out of date. It's not action-packed drama, nor even great drama.

But what makes Whales special is not its story, but rather the concept of making a film entirely about people growing old, starring a cast with a median age of more than 65. In this age when films are made more for money than for content, The Whales of August is a refreshing exception.