Audrey Rose
A carefree afternoon in Central Park, Madison Avenue advertising executive Bill Templeton and his wife Janice enjoying the late summer sun with their only child Ivy, born at precisely 8:22 on the morning of October 3rd, 1965, the very moment that Audrey Rose Hoover died in a terrible accident in Pittsburgh, her grieving father Elliot later finding comfort in the teachings of mystics who believe in the reincarnation of the soul.
Janice and Bill becoming aware that they are being shadowed by a strange man, increasingly bold in his overtures, Elliot finally approaches them and invites them to dinner to explain himself, saying he has been watching Ivy and believes her to be the reincarnation of Audrey Rose; Bill reacts defensively while Janice just wants to protect her little girl, but with Ivy’s nightmares resurfacing every year around her birthday, now accompanied by physical burns on her skin, Janice begins to consider the impossible.
Adapted by Frank De Felitta from his own novel of the same name, Audrey Rose was directed by Robert Wise, a master of any genre he adopted, with classic horror, science fiction and musicals in a resume which already featured, The Curse of the Cat People, The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story and The Andromeda Strain, though despite many parallels with The Exorcist – a wealthy city family confronted by a threat in their own home, upmarket domesticity turning to horror – it is played sympathetically as a drama.
With multiple Oscar nominee Marsha Mason leading the cast as Janice and Rollerball’s John Beck as Bill, reacting with anger to what he cannot comprehend, The Elephant Man’s Anthony Hopkins underplays as Elliot, sinister in his first appearances but earnest throughout, aware of the irrational nature of his beliefs his requests yet utterly devoted to them, while in her screen debut as Ivy, intelligent, precocious and haunted by memories she cannot explain, is Susan Swift.
Wise’s direction restrained, he instead allows the actors free reign to inhabit the space with location shooting in New York and a fantastic recreation of the beautiful apartments and lobbies of the historic Hotel des Artistes building complete with gothic exteriors, a living environment in which events play out as the characters face the insanity of their situation and the spiritual dilemma in which it has manifested.
The film moving into a courtroom drama in the third act and then into the laboratory for the finale, it becomes a scientific enquiry into the supernatural, echoing in some ways The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, filmed by Wise in 1963 and De Felitta’s third novel The Entity, filmed by Sidney J Furie in 1982, though his sequel For the Love of Audrey Rose published that same year has not been adapted.
Originally released in the spring of 1977, Audrey Rose was not as well received or successful as it might have been at the time, that summer having been dominated by a science fiction film released by rival studio 20th Century Fox which debuted only weeks later, but presented on Blu-ray from a new scan of the original 35mm camera negative for Arrow it deserves reappraisal as an immaculately crafted analysis of family, grief and acceptance and the unceasing quest for answers to impossible questions.
Carrying a plethora of special features, Masha Mason is the only member of cast or crew newly interviewed, stating how like many in the seventies she was interested in the subject, magician Adam Cardone also commenting on the upswell of “new age” beliefs in that era, while Lee Gambin provides a fascinating visual essay on reincarnation in cinema, Daniel Schweiger discusses Michael Small’s score and Jon Towlson provides production detail in his commentary, though most insightful is the archive interview with De Felitta where he credits his upbringing for his interests: “Italians believe in everything supernatural.”
Audrey Rose will be available on Blu-ray from Arrow from Monday 7th November
