The Innocents

The Innocents is a 1961 film, directed by Jack Clayton, that is based on Henry James' novella, The Turn Of The Screw. Somehow it had taken me this long to see it, and wow was I impressed. It's one of the best ghost stories ever filmed.

But does it have ghosts? As I mentioned in the article about the novella, whether or not the spirits shown in the film are real or the hallucinations of its main character, Miss Giddens, is up for you to decide. 

As with the book, Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr, who is wonderful but a generation too old for the part) has been hired to watch over two orphan children. The uncle (a delicious cameo by Michael Redgrave) wants nothing to do with them, and puts her in charge. 

She meets Flora first (Pamela Franklin) and then Miles (Martin Stephens) is expelled from school (just what he did to get him kicked out is another mystery we can ponder). All is well until a game of hide and seek leads to the attic, where Kerr finds a picture of a man. Just minutes later, she will see that man as a ghostly vision through a window.

Kerr grows more and more possessed by what she sees. Later, she will see a woman standing in the reeds of a lake. She imagines this is Miss Jessel, her predecessor, who killed herself after the death of Peter Quint, who was the man in the window. Kerr badgers the housekeeper for details, and finally gets out of her that the two departed had had a relationship. They treated a room like the "dark woods," the housekeeper puts it.

Clayton, with a script written mostly by Truman Capote of all people, creates a world of disorientation and menace. Capote adds some Southern Gothic, as there is a sense of decay about the place. When Kerr first walks into the house, she touches some white roses (an image that will resound through the film) and the petals fall off. She sees a beetle climbing out of the mouth of a cherub statue. When she meets Flora, one of the first things the little girl asks her is "Are you afraid of reptiles?" For in this garden lurk creepy-crawlies.

The cinematographer is Freddie Francis, and he is key to this film's success. He often darkens the edges of the screen, so the viewer seems to be looking down a tunnel. The depth of focus is used so two characters are often shown conversing, one in the background, the other in the foreground, and both facing the camera. A scene that has Kerr wandering the halls holding a candelabra, hearing whispers, the laughter of children, and strange knocking noises, is one of the spookiest I've ever seen. And the images of the ghosts, especially the still, black-clothed figure of Miss Jessel just standing in the lake, is the stuff of nightmares.

"I only wanted to save the children, not destroy them," is the first spoken line of the film. Of course it doesn't turn out how Kerr wants it. The Innocents is a masterpiece of terror and madness.