The Children's Hour
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Movie Reviews of The Children's Hour
Movie Review: The "FINEST" Hour
Summary: 5 Stars
...dark, brooding and deeply moving with a cast of stellar performances especially from the always wonderful Fay Bainter and the greatly under rated Miriam Hopkins!Movie Review: Film way ahead of its time but GREAT
Summary: 5 Stars
Hepburn again proves she could act any character, from Holly Golightly to Eliza Doolittle to Karen. She was a beauty, and all class.Movie Review: The only Hepburn/MacLane Pairing on the Silver Screen
Summary: 5 Stars
James Garner pales against the pairing of these two great stars! Great story - and thought-provoking!Movie Review: Audrey
Summary: 5 Stars
As a collector of Audrey Hepburn's movies, I just could say: another wonderful piece!Movie Review: A Child's Lie
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Children's Hour," based on the play by Lillian Hellman, is for anyone who appreciates quality filmmaking. Expertly directed by William Wilder, the film is a multi-layered, richly textured morality tale regarding a simple lie and it's devastating consequences. Considered quite controversial upon it's initial release, the film seems rather tame by today's standards. As headmistresses of the exclusive Wright-Dobie School for Girls, Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine deliver stand-out performances, acting as teachers, disciplinarians, and den-mothers to a brood of twenty girls under their charge. After Mary (Karen Balkin) a deceitful, lying little bully who is black-mailing one of her fellow classmates, is punished by Karen (Hepburn) and Martha (MacLaine), she takes revenge by twisting an overheard comment between the two women and turns it into a vicious falsehood against her teachers, intimating that the two are lovers. She relates this lie to her overly trusting grandmother (Acadamy Award nominee Fay Bainter) who soon spreads the gossip to the parents of the other girls and to the community at large. The resulting furor threatens the future of the school and ostracizes the two women as outcasts.
Unfortunately, the lie also forces a guilt-ridden Martha to examine her feelings for her friend and confront her own repressed homosexuality, which leads to disasterous results.
Although the homosexual aspect of the story has taken the focus (complete with the gay character being punished for her "perversion".......a norm in films of the time which featured a gay character), the film's core is actually about the utter destruction that can be caused by innuendo and half-truths and the power of the spoken word.
Hepburn and MacLaine are backed up with equally powerful perfomances from Bainter, Miriam Hopkins as Martha's somewhat daffy Aunt Lillian and James Garner as Karen's frustrated but ever loyal fiance. Angela Cartwright (of "Lost In Space" fame) has a smaller role as the kleptomaniac student being blackmailed by Mary. The film is beautifully photographed in black and white which actually enhances the tone of the film. The peaceful and serene country setting of the picture mirrors the opening scenes of happiness, hope and contentment but soon stands in stark contrast to the turmoil which soon takes place within it's idyllic confines.
The DVD version provides excellent picture and sound quality but alas, offers no extras except for a theatrical trailer, thereby excluding it from a full 5-star rating.