Trailer
Plot summary
In the summer of 1935, identical twins Niles and Holland Perry live on their family's Connecticut farm with their widowed mother, Alexandra. Uncle George and his wife, Vee, oversee the place, and their son Russell is part of the household. The boys' grandmother Ada, a Russian emigrant, lives nearby and is especially close to Niles. She has taught him to project his mind into other living things, an ability passed down in the Perry family, and the two of them call it the Game. That summer, a run of accidents strikes the household and the surrounding farm community.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Other (1972)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Robert Mulligan and Tom Tryon pursued Uta Hagen for the role of Ada, but Tryon and his then-lover Clive Clerk first had to convince Mulligan she was right for it; Mulligan then visited Hagen at her Montauk house and talked her into taking the part.
- Chris and Martin Udvarnoky tried out for the twins Niles and Holland after their grade-school teacher told their parents about the production, and after they were cast Robert Mulligan asked each boy which part he wanted and gave both the roles they asked for.
- Robert Mulligan never shows the twin brothers in the same frame; they are always separated by a camera pan or an editing cut.
- The film was shot entirely in Murphys and Angels Camp, California, after director Robert Mulligan dropped his plan to shoot in Connecticut, where the story is set, because production began in autumn and the leaves would not match the story's height of summer.
- Much of Goldsmith's music was taken out when the film was shortened after test screenings; a 22-minute suite of his compositions was released on the soundtrack album of The Mephisto Waltz 25 years after the film came out.
- Martin Udvarnoky recalled that Robert Mulligan was mostly a nice director on set but got a little angry while filming a deleted swimming scene, because the boys struggled to act in the cold outdoor weather.
