'The Whales of August' (NR)

With incomparable grace and gumption, Lillian Gish and Bette Davis rise above the tenuous material set before them in "The Whales of August," a fusty and unfocused play adaptation that provides a setting and little else for the grand dames. The climaxes and crises of this mannered, grandmotherly drama are as elusive as the whales themselves.

Playwright David Berry adapts his own work, the becalmed story of interdependent sisters who are wearing on each other's nerves after 30 years together in coastal Maine. Gish, the eternal innocent, and Davis, the enduring shrew, couldn't be better suited to these rare, geriatric roles of the long-suffering Sarah and the sharp-tongued Libby. At 91, Gish's inner beauty still shines through as it did when she was D.W. Griffith's favorite leading lady. And Davis, with her ravaged face, controls a scene as easily as she did in "All About Eve" almost 40 years ago. She plays the blind Libby, bristling gleefully with anger and lingering vanity.

Sarah cares for her disabled sister with devotion and patience, brushing Libby's thick, white hair as though it were a young girl's. Gish's lovely portrayal is sweet-natured instead of saintly, tolerant instead of tyrannized. She's tough under all those "yes, dears" that soothe her sister's gloomy moods. It's a pleasure just to watch her putter in her rose garden, or chat with her husband's portrait, yellowing in its filigree.

Libby, who supports Sarah, taunts her for her industriousness, so Sarah is tempted when an old friend (Ann Sothern) and a gallant e'migre' (Vincent Price) propose alternatives that threaten the sisters' arrangement. They seem to have arrived from the wings. Even though director Lindsay Anderson wants to open up the play for the screen, we sense entrances, stage directions. And though he adds scenic exteriors, moonshine and sea foam, there's no escaping the focus inside Sarah's house.

Anderson, a British social satirist, has succeeded in the past on both stage and screen. With his background in both, it is all the more disappointing that he has failed here. But like many another adapter he does not translate the piece, but transplants it.

Davis ripostes with vinegary familiarity. And it is good to see her cast as a temperamental dowager instead of a psychotic hag. Gish is never less than archetypal, an aging angel clipping roses. It's haunting, a reminder of impermanence, to see them as they are now, while their ghosts, still glamorous, dwell in the repertory houses. But there is also something shivery about preserving that impermanence on film, a cathedral in a can.

"The Whales of August" is suitable for general audiences.