Billie Whitelaw could make a mother's affection disturbing without making it seem false. We value the conviction she brings to protective, formidable women, even when a screenplay asks her to explain too much.
Fi1m perspective
In The Krays (1990), Billie Whitelaw's Violet treats indulging her dangerous sons as ordinary mothering. She does not need an outward threat to make that affection troubling. We were unsettled by her tenderness, because she made us understand how easily loyalty could excuse what these men did. Peter Medak's film is worth seeing for her, especially in the family scenes, where her authority exceeds that of the more openly threatening material.
Her early television and film work often cast her as gutsy working-class women. The collaboration with Samuel Beckett, which began in 1964 and lasted 25 years, demanded exact control of voice and body, often with scarcely any movement. In the stage work Not I (1972), he wrote her the role of Mouth, with only her mouth visible. The physical restrictions were severe, and the delivery had to be precise and without apparent feeling. That is worth remembering alongside the protective mothers and menacing women: she was also prepared to deny us the familiar signs of emotion.
Mrs Baylock, the nanny in The Omen (1976), belongs to the more directly menacing side of her screen work. The association with frightening women is understandable, but it leaves out the ordinary affection that makes Violet so troubling. Her final film appearance, as Joyce Cooper in Hot Fuzz (2007), was a comic turn; chilling was not the only useful thing she could be.
Even Whitelaw cannot solve the problems in Philip Ridley's screenplay for The Krays. Ridley gives Violet enough influence to make the family scenes matter, then places more explanatory weight on her possessiveness than it can bear. Whitelaw can make us believe in this mother; she cannot make mothering a sufficient explanation for her sons' violence. Martin Walsh's editing also leaves repeated evidence of the twins' closeness feeling longer than it needs to, despite the strength of those domestic scenes. Start with The Krays, provided a crime film in which the family scenes are the main attraction sounds like your sort of evening.
Biography
Billie Whitelaw was an English actress. Born in Coventry in 1932, she began her career in the 1950s with stage and television work, later appearing in films including Frenzy (1972), The Omen (1976) as Mrs Baylock, Maurice (1987), The Krays (1990) as Violet Kray, and Quills (2000).
She maintained a close professional collaboration with playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years, performing in and helping develop several of his works including Not I, Footfalls and Happy Days. Whitelaw died in 2014.
