Memento Mori

Remember You Must Die.....Hardly the sort of thing you expect to hear when you answer the telephone, but this is just what an elderly and somewhat eccentric circle of friends do hear from their mysterious caller. Only one of the circle is seriously upset by the constant calls, the rest deal with it in their own inimitable ways.

A retired inspector takes on the task of finding the source of the calls with extremely interesting results.

The cast of this little gem reads like a who's who of English theatre. Each actor plays their role to perfection, engendering delight and ire accordingly. There is much to entertain in this story, a little harmless sexual titillation from one old gent, tales of long past infidelities, blackmail, a dissolute son, a secret marriage and of course death itself.

This took no effort at all to watch.

"Memento Mori" seems to have been a labour of love for director Jack Clayton. He had long wanted to make a film of Muriel Spark's novel, but had little success; producers were not willing to take a gamble on a film which was mostly about elderly people and therefore, according to received wisdom, not good box-office. In the end Clayton achieved his ambition, when he was himself in his seventies. This was to be his final film, and was not (as he had hoped) a feature film, but a TV movie, made for BBC2's "Screen Two" series.

The action takes place in the late 1950s. The leading characters are mostly a group of elderly Bohemians who form part of London's literary scene. Charmain Colston was at one time one of Britain's leading novelists, but now seems to be suffering from senile dementia. Dame Letty Colston, the sister of Charmian's husband Godfrey, is also a successful novelist. Charmain, Godfrey and Letty, and other members of their circle, are all being plagued by mysterious, and anonymous, phone calls. In each case a man announces "Remember you must die" (the literal meaning of the Latin phrase "memento mori") and then hangs up.

The plot is quite a complicated one; apart from the phone calls, much turns upon the will of Lisa Brooke, an associate of the Colton's and a former lover of Godfrey who has recently died. Lisa's housekeeper Mabel Pettigrew is hoping to inherit her estate, and is much put out when Lisa's widower Guy, a literary critic, turns up at the funeral. (Lisa and Guy were separated, and Mabel, along with many others, believed him to be dead). Henry Mortimer, a retired police officer turned private investigator, is called in to probe into the mystery of the phone calls, which many people are convinced have some connection to Lisa's past. Despite the portentous overtones of the film's title, the overall tone is more comic than serious.

I have never read Spark's novel, but watching the film I could not really understand why Clayton was so obsessed with filming it; the plot came across as not only complicated but also confusing, and the solution to the phone call mystery, revealed at the end, did not make a lot of sense. Nevertheless, the film still richly repays watching for the gallery of superb performances from some of the senior members of the British acting profession. There are too many good contributions for me to mention them all, but I would single out the following:-

Michael Hordern as Godfrey, a practised Lothario who even in old age still lusts after every younger woman he sets eyes on.

Renee Asherson as Charmian, seemingly a charmingly dotty old lady, but actually more with-it than many people, including her husband, suspect.

Maggie Smith as the cynically mercenary Mabel, the nearest the film has to a villain.

Maurice Denham as Guy, still mischievous and twinkly-eyed, and with as much of an eye to the ladies as Godfrey, despite his advancing years and the fact that he has to hobble about on a pair of sticks. And, unlike Godfrey, he ends up with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter.

Thora Hird as Jean Taylor, Charmian's former maid, now confined to hospital.

Stephanie Cole as the arrogant and overbearing Letty. Cole, unlike most of her co-stars, is still with us, but she was much younger than her character's supposed age. She was one of a number of British actors- Clive Dunn and Angela Lansbury are two others who come to mind- who seemed to specialise in playing characters much older than their real age. (It was around this period that Cole, then about fifty, starred in the sit-com "Waiting for God" in which she played a character aged around eighty).

Another reviewer, writing in August 2023, points out that the film had as at that date "sadly never been repeated on TV since its broadcast in 1992". It was, in fact, repeated last year on BBC4 as part of their policy of reviving classic BBC dramas, and I was glad to catch it as a chance to see some of the great and good of the early nineties. 7/10.

I wish I thought there were the slightest chance this little movie would come to DVD. Unfortunately, as one of the minor players on Masterpiece Theatre it never even got to vhs. Truly a pity. A study of the lives of a handful of upperclass, middle-aged/elderly folks made vunerable and fearful by the persistant calling of an anonymous caller reminding them to "remember, you must die," this movie has some of the most eccentric, loveable British actors/actresses--mostly, with the exception of Maggie Smith, unknown to Americans. Nevertheless, the Georges de la Rue music is wonderful, the acting is superb, and the story is at once quirky and poigant--anyone with elderly parents will be especially affected, I think. Get hold of it, if you are fortunate enough to find someone who had the common sense to tape it when it aired.

A group of friends receive phone calls from an anonymous caller, who threatens to unearth a dark, hidden secret.

Muriel Spark penned some wonderful stories, and this is no exception, expect scandal, intrigue, mystery and suspense.

Without a shadow of doubt, this was The BBC at its best, a time where The Institution was admired and adored, and rightly so, proof that they made the best dramas. Dramas that bettered most films.

There simply aren't enough superlatives for me to throw at this, the story is wonderful, it is intriguing, suspenseful, amusing, and best of all, incredible acting.

One of the richest casts assembled on a TV drama, Maggie Smith, Thora Bird, Stephanie Cole, Reneé Asherson to name just a few, what a job the casting director did here.

10/10.

I have had the pleasure of reading many of Muriel Spark's novels and stories, the first being "The Abbess of Crewe," whose deadpan satire of Watergate made me laugh so hard that I thought my face might freeze into a mask of idiot's delight. "Nasty Habits," its unfortunate film version, was a disappointment. I therefore feared an even sadder fate would befall any screen treatment of "Memento Mori," which has long since become my favorite of Ms. Spark's works, having, I think, the most impressive balance of satire and warmth in her entire oeuvre.

I was delighted, then, when I saw the film broadcast on PBS. To this day I can't decide whether the lion's share of the credit for its brilliance belongs to Maggie Smith and her fellow actors or to the director or the screenwriters. It doesn't matter; it's not my place to judge.

However, I have always been at a loss to understand why this effectively lost masterpiece has not been available to the public after all this time. Surely PBS or BBC America could at least air it again, so that we happy few who were blessed to have caught it might at least record it off the TV.

In the meantime, we will have to subsist on our fond memories.

Heavy, heavy sigh.