'The Shout': Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski

Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1978 psychological horror film based on Robert Graves’s short story of the same title won the Jury Prize at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.

The story of making of The Shout could be the basis of an interesting film in itself. Ten years after censors ‘arrested’ Ręce do gory! (Hands Up!, 1967), Skolimowski was sentenced to making films outside Poland. Although Deep End, made in 1970, confirmed his directing talent, it did not fundamentally change the artistic prospects of the Polish filmmaker. In the 1970s, Skolimowski was on the cusp. He himself recalled in an interview with Sebastian Smoliński: ‘I found myself in these Western paradises, as we thought at the time, but I couldn’t find projects to work on. I was a penniless exile from Poland.’

In 1971, he embarked on what he calls the dreadful production of The Adventures of Gerard, knowing from the start that he was making a ‘terrible mess’. The presence of Claudia Cardinale in the cast, fresh after the success of 8½ (1963), did not help much – the film turned out to be an artistic and commercial flop. It was then that Skolimowski was approached by an eccentric millionaire from America. ‘He was in his thirties, had no education and a lot of money. And he figured that since he knew nothing, he would become a film producer’ – the director recounted years later. It was this millionaire who commissioned Skolimowski to write a script for a crime romance, which the director was to work on at the London Hilton, where the expensive stay was to be paid for entirely by the self-appointed producer. However, when Skolimowski had finished writing, the millionaire made him an ‘irresistible’ offer: the filmmaker was to hand over the rights to the written text to him, giving up directing the film. When Skolimowski refused, a hefty hotel bill appeared at the door of his room.

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Frame from ‘The Shout’, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978, photo: Entertainment Pictures / ForumForum

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And just when it seemed that Skolimowski would be forced to succumb to blackmail, a man who was to prove to be one of the most important artistic companions in the director’s life came to the rescue – Jeremy Thomas, an up-and-coming producer who many years later would go down in history as co-writer of Naked Lunch and The Last Emperor, among others. At the time, Thomas had worked on only one film, and in his hand he had a seven-page short story by Robert Graves (author of the 1924 novel I, Claudius). That short story was The Shout, about a man with a fractured soul who possessed the ability to kill with his shout. Skolimowski decided to write the script and direct the film based on the short prose, and with the advance received from Thomas, he was able to buy his way out of the hotel.

In keeping with the letter of Graves’s short story, Skolimowski enclosed The Shout in a peculiar bracket, making it the story of a man placed in a mental institution. Played by the charismatic Alan Bates, the demonic hero in black spun a tale of his acquaintance with a married couple from Devon, his ‘cracked soul’ and the technique of the deadly shout he had learned from the Aboriginal peoples – taking the audience on a strange, horror-filled journey.

The metaphysical horror film became Skolimowski’s chance to meet – as he said himself – the flowers of British acting: the cast included such stars as Alan Bates, John Hurt, Susannah York, Jim Broadbent and Tim Curry, made famous by the success of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). The superbly acted, confidently guided film allowed Skolimowski to climb to the professional top, culminating in the 1980s, very fruitful for the director with the then-created Moonlighting, The Lighthouse Keeper and the costume drama Torrents of Spring.

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The Shout [1978] Official Trailer

For Skolimowski, The Shout was also a space for artistic experimentation. This was particularly true of the film’s sound layer, in which the filmmakers built a sense of metaphysical danger and alienation. A key challenge turned out to be the recording of the titular shout, which had to last as long as 23 seconds and have the power to shock the audience. After many unsuccessful rehearsals with the actors, it was Skolimowski himself who recorded this shout, and when he and the sound engineers produced it in a studio in London’s Soho in the middle of the night, its howl even pulled in a police patrol.

Moreover, The Shout was about to make history at the Cannes Film Festival. For, believing in the innovative power of the film’s sound layer, producer Jeremy Thomas decided to bring the latest Dolby system to the festival screening so that all effects would be more audible. He was not wrong. Skolimowski himself recalled in an interview that when the titular shout echoed from the speakers, ‘the entire building shook’. There was a joke circulating that the Cannes Jury Prize for Skolimowski was the result of deafening the festival jurors.

The Shout. Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. Screenplay: Jerzy Skolimowski, Michael Austin, based on a short story by Robert Graves. Cinematography: Mike Molloy. Starring Alan Bates, Susannah York, John Hurt, Robert Stephens, Tim Curry. Production: United Kingdom 1978.

Translated by Patryk Grabowski