The Innocents
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Movie Reviews of The Innocents
Movie Review: Child's Play
Summary: 5 Stars
Deborah Kerr gave her finest performance as the repressed spinster in this adaptation of the Henry James novella "The Turn of the Screw." Ingrid Bergman once tried it but she brought robustness to the role that didn't quite fit. Kerr's interpretation, like the film itself full of light and dark, to date is definitive, and now we can see it on a DVD that definitely is not. A pity, too, because some of the principals are alive and could have enlivened this poorly produced disc, one that cries for a commentary. The only "extras" are a trailer, a bad pan-and-scan version and other film promos.
So dominating is Kerr's presence that she is able to hold the screen while sharing it with two children (no mean feat) who are charming actors, Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin. Their governess learns that the "sprits" of her dead predecessor and a groundskeeper seek to reclaim the children. As their uncle, Michael Redgrave's cameo opens the film. In other support, Megs Jenkins dusts off the housekeeper with aplomb. Is the governess hallucinating or is the horror real? The answer ranks this ghost story right up there with "The Haunting" and "The Uninvited."
The anticipated release of this DVD comes just as Universal announces another turn of the screw, this one a contemporary remake called "The Turning" in which the governess becomes an estate caretaker. It will be made by the gentleman who gave us recent remakes of "House of Wax" and "The Blob." If "The Innocents" doesn't scare you, that news should. This is one of the classiest and most subtle ghost stories ever written. It's the very antithesis of the blood-and-gore movie shockers being promoted on this disc.
William Archibald adapted it for the stage and Truman Capote helped midwife it to film. Given the overt Freudianism and covert pedophilia that quicken their script, it is odd to find a key moment missing on DVD, one in which the boy plants a lip-to-lip lover's kiss on the governess. You wonder what other "modifications" (as the full-screen version warns) have been made. Jack Clayton directed and Freddie Francis photographed it in widescreen black-and-white ill-served in this transfer. You'd do well to wait for the special edition. Surely there will be one.
Movie Review: The Innocents - A Gem And Masterpiece Of Old School Horror
Summary: 5 Stars
While I have not read Henry James' novella, this 1961 version of his story is absolutely superb. It ranks right up there with the 1963 version of The Haunting (a version that was MUCH more truer to Jackson's novel than Jan DeBont's VERY horrendous loosely based 1999 remake). Psychologically, this film starring Kerr is a gem to behold.
Like with the 1963 version of The Haunting, The Innocents conveys an unsure or uncertain sense about our unconventional protagonist or heroine. Is Miss Giddons really seeing the ghosts of the former grounds keeper and previous governess Peter Quint and Ms. Jessel? Or is she simply imaginging seeing the two because of her sexual repression of having to take this job in order to leave a man she loved, but couldn't be with due to class (societal) separation? All I can say is is that Freud would have loved reading a story like Henry James' novella and seeing this 1961 version just to add his Freudian views on if Miss Giddons truly is a sexually repressed spinster. These questions of course differ slightly from the conflicts that are found in Eleanor in The Haunting with Eleanor's struggles with her own demons of loneliness.
Whether you wish to believe that all this is in the mind of Miss Giddons is up to you, but the sense of possession (if any at all) seems to lie mostly in Miles. The possession in Flora is present, but it is with Miles that Miss Giddons appears to get through to (if only very briefly) on numerous ocassions and as a result finds Miles torn with how to handle what's happening. The climatic confrontation between Miss Giddons, Miles and the "supposed" ghost of Peter Quint at the end is truly bone chilling as well as the nearly lingering, smoldering and passionate kiss she gives the lifeless Miles.
To say anything more would give away (as far as whether or not Miss Giddons is sane or not in what she's hearing and seeing) pivetol plot points, but overall if you're looking for a good scare this movie along with the 1963 version of The Haunting is the best thing to pick up a t video store. Oh, and by the way, don't forget to turn off all the lights when you watch it to add to the scariness of it *grin*.
Movie Review: A first rate ghost story for intelligent adults
Summary: 5 Stars
I remember when I was 9 years old and saw an article on the film, The Innocents, in Life Magazine. I wanted to go see it but my mother thought it wouldn't be a good idea. This is an adult horror story with all the ambiguities of adult life and longing. As such, it is probably the best of the adult ghost stories. The film is an adaptation of Henry James's short novel, The Turn of the Screw, a novel I read in collage which gave me the shivers with its wonderful and subtle descriptions of the evil apparitions that population the story. Henry James trusted in the intelligence and imagination of the reader and thus he under describes terror so that the reader can fill in the horror with their own imagination. Well, this film is much in keeping with the spirit of Henry James because it never tells too much or reveals too much, thus keeping the viewer on their feet for the full 100 minutes of the film. The film is full of ambiguity for we are never certain as to whether the film is about two evil spirits of the dead come back to take the souls and bodies of two innocent children or whether the entire film is about the over excited imagination of a sexually repressed preacher's daughter who sees sexy ghosts where there are none.
Deborah Kerr is perfect as the governess, Miss Giddons, pretty and yet proper who professes to love children even though this is her first job as a governess. The child actors who play Flora and Miles, Pamela Franklin and Martin Stephens, are superb at being loving bright children and yet having just enough ambiguity in their actions to make the viewer uncertain as to whether they are not also in the power of evil forces. Martin Stephens is actually fantastic as the brother Miles for we are uncertain if he is precocious or sometimes inhabited by an adult spirit.
The black and white format for the film with limited sets and effects are used to maximum advantage. Truman Capote and William Archibald wrote the screenplay and the lines of al the characters are intelligent and double meaning. Director Jack Clayton is to honored for such a great adaptation of one of America's greatest ghost stories.
Movie Review: Mysticism vs Reality
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Innocents" is one of the world's finest films. The source is Henry James' "Turn of the Screw", a gothic ghost story depicting a conflict between mysticism and reality within the mind of a spinster governess in Victorian England. This theme is hinted at during the opening credits. What is to follow is 100 minutes of beautifully photographed incidents and scenes, facts and half-facts, distortions and gossip with no line between reality and delusion to ground us. As the confusion within our minds grows, shadows and distortions create shadows on the sides of the film, each and every frame of which is a black and white work of art with an accompanying soundtrack enhancing every frame. Orchestration, nature, voices, intonations, fragments of sentences, laughter, tears, screams, whispers all create an unsettling, atmospheric mood-character as haunting as any ghost. You sit and wonder if anything is really there or is it "only the wind, my dear"? Is she just "imaging things"? If there is no answer to that question, is it worth noticing? Is it worth making decisions about? The governess thinks so with disasterous results. You will think about this movie for days after seeing it. Was Mrs. Grose telling the truth, or spreading lies? Does the governess have a loose screw? When was she sent over the edge? There is enough evidence to support any view you choose to take, the movie plays beautifully whichever way you choose to look at it. You'll benefit from the therapy of being forced to think, forced to choose, forced to contemplate reality confronted with mysticism. The movie starts at the end and ends at the beginning. If the governess isn't insane after the opening credits she is insane at the closing credits, trapped forever in a self-created hell, forced to remember and remember in an eternal, vicious circle which becomes the film "The Innocents". For us the film is over, but the governess is locked inside it for eternity. And that's when the horror takes us. This should be seen alone and in the dark and in letterbox/widescreen format. It is for intellectuals and classicists. There is yet no DVD available.
Movie Review: In No Sense "Innocents"
Summary: 5 Stars
Movie: ***** DVD Transfer: ***** Extras: ****
An excellent and suspenseful screen adaptation of Henry James' classic ghost story "The Turn of the Screw", featuring a magnificent tour-de-force performance by Deborah Kerr. She plays the spinsterish and repressed Miss Giddens, a Victorian-era governess who journeys to an isolated English country estate to care for two young orphans whose only surviving relative (Michael Redgrave) doesn't wish to be involved in their upbringing. Shortly after her arrival, Miss Giddens begins to be see the ghosts of the mansion's former stableman and the woman who was in sexual thrall to him, a woman who also happened to be the children's previous governess. Soon enough, the children begin to show signs of being possessed by the spirits of the dead lovers, evidencing a disturbing level of carnal knowledge. Are the children truly "innocents"? And can Miss Giddens possibly preserve their souls? Or is she herself somehow tainted? With grim and grisly certainty, the truth begins to unfold, leading to a genuinely terrifying and unexpected climax.
Fox Home Video's presentation of this mature and hauntingly eerie movie cannot be faulted. Transferred in glorious black and white, the DVD offers both the widescreen (Cinemascope) and pan-and-scan versions of the film (my review is based on the original widescreen presentation). The print is sharp and clean, and the creepy sound effects are crisp and clear. Although the DVD package fails to mention it, the DVD also includes the film's Original Theatrical Trailer (which I found inappropriately hokey considering the subtlety of the film itself), as well as trailers for three other Fox Home Video horrors of negligible distinction. Supremely well-acted (especially by Miss Kerr and Martin Stephens & Pamela Franklin as her two young charges) and intelligently directed, "The Innocents" is a bona fide classic worthy of a place in your home video library.