A SHOCKING ACCIDENT
UK | 1983 | Colour | 25 mins
Oscar winner for Best Short Film 1983
Credits:
Director: James Scott
Cinematographer: Adam Barker-Mill
Producer: Christine Oestreicher
Screenplay: James Scott
Ernie Eban
Based on the short story by: Graham Greene
Production designer: Louise Stjernsward
Associate Producer: Richard Craven
Composer: Simon Brint
Simon Wallacee
Editor: Tom Priestley
Assistant editor: Ronald Rothman
Sound editor: Colin Miller
Sound Recordist: John Brommage
Sound assistant: Keith Hyde
1st Assistant director: Stephen Pushkin
2nd Assistant director: Nick Laws
Make-up and hair: Hajera Coovadia
Casting director: Joyce Gallie
Production assistant: Jeanne Ferber
Assistant to the producer: Caroline Gold
Focus: Jeremy Gee
Clapper/loader: Bob Brock
Grip: Terry Chapman
2nd unit Photography, Naples: Roberto Meddi
Electrician: Neil Gamblin
Gaffer: Terry Potter
Driver: Mikki Gray
Dubbing mixer: Tony Anscombe
Special effects: Henry Harris
Cast:
(Link For Full Cast Here)
ROLE … ACTOR
Jerome and Mr Weathersby … Rupert Everett
Sally … Jenny Seagrove
Headmaster … Benjamin Whitrow
Aunt Joyce … Barbara Hicks
Synopsis
In this adaptation from the short story, ‘A Shocking Accident,’ by Graham Greene, an English school boy in boarding school learns that his father had been killed in a bizarre accident in Naples. The unusual nature of his father’s death haunts him – he is teased at school and years after the event, his aunt still relishes telling the tale. Only after he meets a girl who understands, can he finally shake off this terrible memory.
Biographies
RUPERT EVERETT
Was hailed as one of the brightest young actors of the year when he opened in Another Country. He worked on A Shocking Accident while still playing the part in London’s West End.
JENNY SEAGROVE
An exceptionally talented young actress, Jenny has played major roles in theatre and television, notable The Brack Report and The Woman in White. Her film work includes Jerzy Skolimowski’s Moonlighting and Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero.
JAMES SCOTT
Has distinguished himself as one of Britain’s leading independent film makers, including ground breaking documentaries on artists and politics including Nightcleaners with the Berwick Street Film Collective.
CHRISTINE OESTREICHER
Made her debut with Chance, History, Art… James Scott’s prize winning film. In 1981 she produced Clare Peploe’s Oscar nominated short Couples and Robbers which was released with Blade Runner.
ADAM BARKER-MILL
Having left Oxford with a BA in Modern Languages, Adam decided to switch paths in 1962 and went on to light numerous features and documentaries including, Love’s Presentation Bronco Bullfrog, Richard Hamilton, Adult Fun, The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, Chance, History, Art… Every Picture Tells a Story, and Hero.
Review (Caution - Spoilers in the review!)
Monthly Film Bulletin, Vol 50 No 594, July 1983
by Geoff Brown
A Shocking Accident, Great Britain 1982
Director: James Scott
Jerome Weathersby is informed by his headmaster that his father, a travel writer, has been killed in a Naples street accident – hit by a pig which fell from a collapsing fifth floor balcony. Jerome’s schooldays immediately darken; fellow pupils taunt him, and he grows into an inhibited chartered accountant. When his Aunt Joyce regales a prospective girlfriend, Amanda, with details of the shocking accident, Amanda responds with raucous laughter. But a later girlfriend, Sally, shares Jerome’s unsentimental viewpoint: “What happened to the pig?” she asks. A happy future seems assured.
After the radical questionings of his Arts Council film, Chance, History, Art... , James Scott’s latest production – made with help from the National Film Finance Corporation and Virgin Films – brings him into the orbit or conventional cinema for the first time. For this successor to Flamingo Pictures’ Couples and Robbers (on which Scott was a co-editor) pursues an identical aesthetic goal: a narrative short for commercial release (with Tootsie), as it happens), intelligently and elegantly presented. The goal may be relatively small, but Scott’s achievement remains distinctive. Graham Greene’s brief story (first collected in May We Borrow Your Husband?, 1967) is sufficiently embroidered to ensure dramatic ballast, but the deadpan dialogue and sly, cryptic atmosphere remain.
The film’s comic style crystallizes most clearly in the scenes with Jerome’s aunt (radiantly played by Barbara Hicks, a stalwart character actress, specializing in secretaries). Fond recollections of the deceased author’s pallid literary legacy and the dainty consumption of cucumber sandwiches are suddenly disrupted by allusions to the ‘shocking accident’; tea-time decorum is sabotaged. Scott presents Greene’s comedy of absurd social embarrassment with wry wit and clarity, helped by the eloquent underplaying of Rupert Everett and the crisp photography of Adam Barker-Mill (a regular Scott associate). The chief pleasure of A Shocking Accident, however, lies in its imaginative exploitation of the short-film time span: the succession of elliptical, clearly separated scenes makes the narrative resemble a chain of moving snapshots – matching the Italian tourist postcards that pointedly decorate the front and end frames.