The Innocents

source: The Innocents

The story is something to ponder about. Although, none of the sequences boggle, frighten or at least put the wind up. Nothing. The bungalow is supposed to be haunted, but the ghosts in here seem to be in love. Well, their affection certainly won't cause anything. The setup is made to be suspense-filled, but nothing yields out of it. You anticipate a gruesome climax like a crescendo in a symphony, but you are let down, terribly. The casting is very good, with the lead children generating enough mystique to keep you on tenterhooks. But that's all. They, in fact, annoy you over time. Deborah Kerr is very expressional. The artist who played chaperon impresses. But, the writers are to be blamed for this botched attempt in horror genre. With the climax on board, the whole structure is daft. The dialogs spun out ridicule, the sequences result in scorn. Oh, exasperation is the only thing you garner. 3.4/10. BOTTOM LINE: Not even passes the litmus test for a genre so loved by people. Not recommended! Can be watched with a typical Indian family? YES Profanity/Nudity/Foreplay: No <> Vulgarity: Very Mild <> Sex: Implied <> Violence/Gore: No <> Smoking/Alcohol/Drugs: No

In the 1960's people just didn't talk about child sexual abuse. They also didn't depict it outright in movies. The fact that this movie was cast in the setting of Victorian England further demonstrates its intent to highlight an era of extreme sexual repression, when feelings and emotions that didn't fit with the social and cultural mores of the time were subjugated to evil thoughts and deeds. Miss Giddens was a perfect example of a woman who was raised in a highly religious and fundamentalist environment, who could never admit that sexual longings and urges exist in herself. Nor could she ever conceptualize how young children could suffer abuse from observing violent and sexual acts committed by adults in their presence. Whether there was any direct abuse to the children is speculative, but anyone who has had any training or education in the field of psychology knows that vicarious trauma can be transmitted to children who witness sexually deviant and violent acts. Miles exhibits classic sociopathic behaviors at school and we're given clues to this when we're told "the other children are afraid of him" and Miles himself starts to admit that he "hurts things". There is also the scene where Miles hides a dove with a broken neck under his pillow and Miss Giddens assumes was killed by Quint's ghost, but in actuality, Miles is committing a classic behavior that many children of sexual abuse do at a young age, which is to kill or maim animals. Individuals who have been sexually abused are often described as "seductive", which is more about lack of clarity around boundaries and intimacy. A child's ability to develop strong boundaries around their sexuality can be destroyed from sexual abuse and physical violence. We can see that Miss Giddens is drawn into the seductive nature of both children, but especially Miles. As her own sexual repression and desires are projected onto Miles, as she is pulled into a desire that causes her lose all her senses about the fact he is a "child", and not the sexually deviant, yet desirous "Quint". Her desire is so strong that she allows herself to be drawn into an inappropriate kiss from Miles, further demonstrating that the child's sexual boundaries are lost, and so too are hers. In the end, Miss Giddens forces Miles to confront a "memory", which is aptly stated by Mrs. Gros when she attempts to point out to Miss Giddens that the little girl is overwrought, not from witnessing the presence of a ghost, but from a "bad memory". Mrs. Gros knows that these children witnessed unspeakable horrors and seems to be often taken aback when discussing these issues with Miss Giddens. Miss Giddens immediately considers these events as evil abominations of ghostly presence rather Mrs. Gros' apparent sense of real incidents that are too taboo to discuss out loud. The fact that Miles dies from the knowledge that he forced to confront is more of a "psychological death", as many children of abuse suffer a "death of the soul" after such abuse. In its excellent dramatic and cinematic effects, The Innocents documents events that are too unspeakable to present outright. The emotions and psychological impact of such events are brilliantly portrayed and touch the viewer somewhere deep in the psyche.

They sure don't make movies like this one anymore. This is one of the few horror movies that does not have gory or graphic images in it. Instead, the spooks in this movie are presented in a subtle way....yet, the movie is quite scary. This is the type of horror movie that I like, one in which every now and then you see a frightening image or a startling scene, and that image or scene lingers in your mind. Everything about this movie is haunting. First, there's the song at the beginning: you hear a young girl's voice singing a beautiful yet somber song. Later you hear that song in several scenes in the movie. Second, there's the setting: this movie takes place in a large Victorian mansion with many rooms and passages, while only about eight people live in it....what could be more eerie than that? Then there's the exceptional cinematography. The black-and-white photography is perfect for this movie. This movie would not have been too creepy if it had been done in color. Further, many of the shots were innovative and the lighting was used ingeniously in some of the scenes. Additionally, I liked the way that the director chose to play around with the sound, which brought more of an element of mystery to the movie. In one particular scene, there was a lot of noise initially....and in a split second there was dead silence....then several seconds later, it was noisy all over again (all in the same scene). But what I think is the most interesting thing about this movie is the fantastic performance by Deborah Kerr. It's fascinating to watch her facial expressions in this movie. She demonstrates her character's fear quite well. I also think that the actor who plays Quint is very scary-looking! He has a very sinister look, and it adds to the spookiness of this movie. If you really want to be spooked by this movie, watch it late at night with all of the lights off....dare to watch it by yourself.

The Innocents is a film that has haunted me ever since I first saw it. Staggering, brilliant, masterful, The Innocents is the Rolls Royce of ghost stories. From the unforgettable camerawork by Freddie Francis to the incisive, beautiful direction by Jack Clayton to the brilliant performance by Deborah Kerr, The Innocents works on a thousand levels. This is a film for anyone who truly wants to see brilliance in its purest form. Any director who wants to make a suspense/horror piece that counts, see this film now. If you can, don't see the pan and scan version -- it was shot in black and white Cinemascope and should be viewed that way -- Letterboxed. Let's hope 20th Century Fox put it out on DVD. It is available on Laser Disc is a beautiful letterbox transfer. But if you get the opportunity to see it on a screen -- RUN. A film that lingers in the mind for decades to come. What more could you ask from a film?..............................

Director Jack Clayton's masterpiece is a study of deepest dread. Its horror is the cinematic equivalent of rising damp. Deborah Kerr accepts a job as the governess of two strange children (Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin) and becomes convinced that they occupy a world haunted by repressed memories and the restless dead. Martin Stephens' performance as the unfathomable Miles is extraordinary. The child projects a physical authority rare for his years. His dialog exchanges with Kerr run the gamut from highly amusing to deeply disturbing. Clayton's greatest achievement is the way he subverts common household settings to the point where they become arenas of fear. The sound design is chilling, conjuring sudden terror and thrusting us into the complex mechanics of the Kerr character's growing paranoia. Strikingly shot and lit, the film is a textbook example of grave cinematic suggestion.

Miss Giddens, an uptight but pretty young woman, takes a job as a Governess for two orphans on a grandiose estate in the English countryside. Flora and Miles seem like thoroughly innocent and angelic children, but soon, whispers of corruption begin to materialize. Miles is expelled from school for reasons he is reluctant to discuss. Miss Giddens learns of the fate of the prior governess, a masochistic young woman named Miss Jessel who was having an affair with a sadistic man named Quint. Soon, Miss Giddens is seeing the ghosts of the arrogantly handsome Quint and the forlorn Miss Jessel everywhere and comes to believe that the children have been possessed. But is she only imagining these horrors? And will she destroy the children in her attempt to save them? This movie is creepy, claustrophobic and totally paranoid. Filmed in moody black and white with an almost non-existent musical score (other than the chilling song "Willow Waylee" sung in a child's voice over the opening credits and throughout the film) "The Innocents" is a flawless suspense drama. I hesitate to call it a ghost story, as the presence of the ghosts is never confirmed (or denied, for that matter.) Nor is the sanity of the main character. Is the prim English Governess (played with classic elegance by Deborah Kerr) simply an uptight prude having obscene fantasies, or are the two children she's caring for really possessed by the evil and perverted spirits of the former governess and her sadistic lover? There's no gore, no stupid incidental music, no insufferably adorable children and no happy ending. Unspoken horrors, dark secrets and things that "decent people" don't discuss, fill this film with sick shadows and diseased memories. Whether or not the ghosts exist is a moot point by films end. This film is about corruption and perversion. Indeed, there are no "Innocents" in this film...only the facade of innocence, a flimsy backdrop of beauty drawn over the ugly, festering truth. But what IS the truth? This film is a masterpiece of dread and still has the power to disturb even some forty years later. I would highly recommend it to ghost enthusiasts and psych majors alike!

All great films engage us to lesser or greater degree: some emotionally, some intellectually -- a few, equally. No film in history, to my memory, seduces the viewer into actively co-creating the piece as it unreels, as does "The Innocents." Immediately, vividly, and subtly, it arrests then implicates the viewer in every frame. Its first "image," in fact, is a blank (black) screen -- and the haunting sound of a child's song. Instantly, viewers unconsciously react, emotionally (as to all music), to the beguiling yet off-putting song and the voice. Emotional tension, established immediately. Yet, one's mind never stops producing thoughts and images. So, without any visual cues from the screen, the haunting song produces images in viewers' own minds -- each no doubt different. Already, then, viewers are seduced into supplying their own mental images and, whether they know it yet or not, have been brilliantly and subliminally placed in the Deborah Kerr role. This, before a single production credit has appeared. We are watching a shadow: a nothing. And our minds demand we fill it with something. Thus does Jack Clayton's astonishing "The Innocents" begin. Certainly, other films have used the same opening device. But none with "The Innocents'" payoff. For, as it develops (based on Henry James', "The Turn of the Screw"), "The Innocents'" themes are, "What do you see? What do you believe is true? Is it? Who is 'innocent?' The children? The nanny? You?" The emotional undertow is inescapable, perhaps more so because two-thirds of the trio of protagonists are "children in peril," always a surefire hook. But "in peril" from what, exactly? Deborah Kerr's possible paranoia / schizophrenia? Ghosts? Or our own powerful, perhaps lurid, imaginings of what may or may not have happened to these children from their deceased and perhaps sexually perverse tutors? The children's memories or imaginings of what did or didn't happen? The film unfolds with some of the most beautiful cinematography in history (Freddie Francis). "The Innocents" requires full-size screening, or at least letterboxing to fully appreciate the visual poetry supporting the suspense. Jack Clayton's production and direction rank among the finest in screen history. The miraculous work he pulls from his cast is uniformly jaw-dropping. Despite Deborah Kerr's ravishing natural beauty, one never recalls even a single performance in which she was "Deobrah Kerr": she was always the character -- whether a nun ("Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison"), an adulterous sexpot ("From Here to Eternity"), a Tennessee Williams underdog ("Night of the Iguana"), a strong-willed soprano-singing teacher ("The King and I") or a romantic comedienne ("An Affair to Remember"). Contrast Kerr's beauty, talent and career with Elizabeth Taylor, say. Equally ravishing, one was always aware of watching Miss Taylor "act." Even in stunt casting, like her Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" or the debacle of "Cleopatra." Miss Kerr is the real thing. So are Megs Jenkins (Mrs. Grose), Martin Stephens (Miles) and Pamela Franklin (Flora). The story and filming progressively grow more audacious, until the last heartbreaking sequence between Kerr and young Stephens. By then, of course, our hearts and minds are so thoroughly complicit in the goings on that the final cry heard on the soundtrack, before we are left again in the blank, black void of our own hearts and imaginings at all we've just lived through, before credits begin to roll, leaves us with perhaps the most haunting of all cinematic experiences. Why? Because we have made the film as it went along, as fully involved as any character in it -- our own minds contributing all that's unspoken and unseen. "The Innocents" is the "Citizen Kane" of its genre. And like "Citizen Kane," it transcends genres. This is an immortal achievement by a team of filmic artists at their peaks. A revelation of what film can be.

Based on the novella "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James, a young governess (Deborah Kerr) for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted. As outsiders looking in as voyeurs, we are left wondering about what the governess sees: are the children possessed? Or perhaps they have become friends with ghosts? Or is the governess simply paranoid? The film keeps us guessing, which only adds to its creepiness. This title has the distinction of featuring the debut of Pamela Franklin, here playing the child Flora, who would later be memorable in "The Legend of Hell House". She expertly presents herself as innocent (hence the title) while saying creepy lines such as, "Oh, look, a lovely spider! And it's eating a butterfly." Did this inspire Jack Hill's "Spider Baby"? The film has received wide critical acclaim for its psychological thrills and also its technological achievements (cinematographer Freddie Francis made the lightning his number one focus, and also shot the film in layers, giving it a deeper look than most movies). No less than Martin Scorsese has listed it among the greatest horror films ever made. Freddie Francis is in top form here, coming off his Oscar win for "Sons and Lovers" (1960). His mark on the horror genre would only increase in the following years, as he took the director's chair for Amicus and Hammer numerous times in the 60s and 70s.

Following a brief scene in Michael Redgrave's (presumably) London home during which he offers and she accepts the post of Governess to his orphaned nephew and niece Deborah Kerr journeys by stage coach to the large country estate which is to be her new home. As she alights from the coach and we get our first full-length view of her (she was seated during the interview with Redgrave) we realize that she is wearing what seems to be an identical costume to the one she wore as Anna Leonowens in The King And I, albeit a black and white version. Nor do the parallels end there; in both films she is a Governess and in both films she comes up against a cold, violent autocratic male, the difference is that the ruler of Siam is very much alive whilst Peter Quint is very much dead. The film has just been re-released in England and having now seen it I'm bemused by the rave reviews it has garnered. It's okay but that's about it, in terms of suspense Les Diaboliques leaves it dead in the water. One sign that a film is not delivering what it aims to is if I start thinking practical thoughts. I started about ten minutes in wondering WHY Michael Redgrave bothered to keep up a house of what looks to have between 20 and 30 rooms standing in about 20 acres when, by his own admission (in that initial interview) he never goes there. He seems to maintain it solely for his orphaned nephew and niece which is stretching credulity somewhat, surely he could have sold it and bought them at least fifty more modest homes; next is the problem of staff; we HEAR about the staff but apart from Mrs Gosse and a VERY (no more than ten/fifteen seconds) fleeting appearance from a servant girl we SEE no one - and this in a house that would require a minimum of twenty; WHERE do they buy the food from and WHO cooks it? WHERE do they buy clothes. The house is isolated, natch, in order to give more credence to the faux 'horror' but no one seems to have thought to give us even a token scene and/or word that would answer this burning question. There is, of course, the 'obligatory' scene in which the ingenue, throwing all common sense to the winds, dons a nightie/negligee, arms herself with a candle and sets out to patrol the three a.m. corridors secure in the knowledge that sooner rather than later she will enjoy a rendezvous with those things that go 'bump' in the night. Adequate, sure; beautifully photographed, okay, if you insist but MASTERPIECE, you're kidding, right.