Dir: Bryan Forbes | UK 1964 116’ | Cast: Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough, Nanette Newman, Patrick MageeA BFI National Archive print
Bryan Forbes’ Seance on a Wet Afternoon is one of those British films that grows more unsettling with time. Made in 1964, at a moment when the traditional British thriller was beginning to absorb the darker psychological currents of European cinema, it has little interest in conventional suspense for its own sake. Instead, Forbes turns the kidnapping at its centre into a claustrophobic study of obsession, delusion and emotional dependence.
Kim Stanley is extraordinary as Myra Savage, a failed spiritualist whose fading belief in her own powers has become inseparable from her hunger for recognition. Her plan to kidnap a child and then “discover” the victim through a séance is absurd on the surface, yet Forbes treats Myra’s warped logic with such seriousness that the film becomes increasingly disturbing.
Richard Attenborough is equally remarkable as her husband Billy, a quiet, deeply devoted man whose love has curdled into complicity. His performance, rightly rewarded with a BAFTA, is less about overt menace than the terrifying passivity of someone who has surrendered his moral judgement to another person.
The film belongs unmistakably to its era. Its London is grey, restrained and socially formal, a world of respectable homes, closed curtains and rigid behaviour in which private obsession can flourish almost invisibly. Forbes exploits that atmosphere beautifully. The Savage home becomes an extension of the marriage itself: cramped, shadowy and oppressive, with the old-fashioned interiors suggesting a life trapped somewhere between Victorian superstition and the modern world. The stark black-and-white photography gives the house an almost gothic quality, while John Barry’s score adds a persistent sense of dread without forcing the suspense.
What makes the film particularly interesting within Forbes’ career is how far it sits from the lighter, more socially observant films for which he is often remembered. After establishing himself as a screenwriter, Forbes was increasingly drawn to stories about people under pressure and the fragile boundaries separating respectability from darker impulses. Seance on a Wet Afternoon is perhaps his purest expression of that fascination: controlled, intelligent and psychologically severe.
It is also a film about performance itself — Myra performing the role of the gifted medium, Billy performing obedience, and both attempting to manufacture a narrative in which they can finally matter. Forbes understands that the most disturbing prisons are often created by people who believe they are acting out of love.
More than sixty years later, the film retains an unnerving intimacy. Its power does not come from spectacle but from watching two people retreat deeper and deeper into a shared fantasy until there is almost no moral world outside it. A superbly acted, elegantly made British psychological thriller, it remains one of Bryan Forbes’ most accomplished and disturbing films.
BRYAN FORBES AT 100 | AT THE BFI LONDON September 2026