The first great ghost story movie made in my lifetime (sort of) is also arguably the best.
Henry James' 'The Turn of the Screw' is rightly considered a landmark in the genre, but it is also tricky to dramatise because relatively little happens - at least in the way of action. Much that is crucial occurs in the mind of the young governess, who is forced to confront some terrible truths about this world and the next. What's more, the constraints of his own artistic sensibility - not to mention the actual laws of the day - made it difficult for James to convey just how depraved the children in the story become under the paranormal influence of Peter Quint and his abused lover, Miss Jessel.
And yet Jack Clayton's film manages to tackle all of these problems and emerge triumphantly - in just over 90 minutes there is never a dull moment and some scenes are intensely disturbing. This is in part due to excellent casting. Megs Jenkins as the housekeeper is - as always - wonderfully watchable. Deborah Kerr's governess is excellent, recalling the put-upon ladies of Victorian melodrama and reminding us that Henry James (like that other James, Montague Rhodes) admired Le Fanu.
The script might have been a problem. The opening credits first mention John Mortimer for 'additional scenes and dialogue', then Truman Capote and William Archibald. That kind of thing often signals a troubled production, but here there are few signs of revision or general tinkering. The odd Americanism does creep in but that's about it. The script was based on Archibald's 1950 stage play - hence some additional bits and bobs.
This is a film of the seen and unseen, heard and unheard. It is just barely possible that there are no ghosts and that Myles and Flora are simply lonely, troubled children. Their parents are dead, after all, and their only close relative (Michael Redgrave, as good as you'd expect) rejects them in all but a financial sense. But we can't disbelieve the governess, or at least not completely. This is a story in which belief in supernatural evil is actually more comforting than the alternative.
It seems that major creative differences were the driving force for much of the film's ambiguous power. Clayton and Archibald differed on whether the governess was just imagining it all. Archibald took the traditional view and, to his credit, Clayton favouring a more Freudian interpretation didn't stop him from including a long, dream-like scene that hints at the opposite.
At just over ninety minutes, The Innocents manages to deal with every aspect of the traditional, Victorian ghost story and still be a compelling 20th-century drama. It stands up remarkably well today. Indeed, there has been a modest revival in period Gothic lately. A good time to seek out the House of Bly if you don't know it, or return for a visit if you do.
1 comment:
It seems that major creative differences were the driving force for much of the film's ambiguous power.
A big factor in many successful creative partnerships, I reckon! The film strikes just the right note of ambiguity, imo.* Equally impressive is how it's so terrifying without ever resorting to anything overly explicit (the scene in which Miles laughs and we pan up to reveal Quint through the window doing likewise will always stick in my mind). Another thing is how it's filmed - in BxW but also in deep focus. I'm not sure why this is so effective, but it is - a bit like that trick of Hitchcock's in which he zooms in on a character while simultaneously pulling the camera back.
* In Verhoeven's version of Total Recall, he asked the cast to play each scene as if either explanation was possible. Kerr seems to have been trying to do the same.
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