The Innocents (1961)

- July 23, 2023

Director: Jack Clayton

Writers: William Archibald and Truman Capote, additional scenes & dialogue by John Mortimer, based on "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James

Stars: Deborah Kerr, Martin Stephens, Pamela Franklin, Michael Redgrave, Clytie Jessop, Peter Wyngarde, Megs Jenkins, Isla Cameron

Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr), a spinster governess, takes charge of the children (Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin) at a remote country manor with the stipulation that she does not bother their uncle (Michael Redgrave) with any questions or information about them.

As the daughter of a country parson, she is chaste and proper and—since she has not married at a time when advantageous marriages were considered necessary for educated, respectable women—expected to remain so.

She begins to notice that the children are whispering and that strange apparitions seem to be keeping watch from afar.

Although no one else seems to see what she does (or won’t admit it), she develops the theory that the previous governess (Clytie Jessop) and another former employee (Peter Wyngarde), both now deceased, are trying to continue an unseemly affair by possessing the bodies of the children.

This is a fantastic, atmospheric ghost story that employs an unreliable point-of-view character to create a haunting sense of ambiguity about what is really happening.

The film opens with Miss Giddens praying emphatically, even desperately, for children to care for—she wants to be everything to them.

So much passion on display—could she be sublimating her unrequited sexual urges, channeling them into paths that she considers more socially acceptable?

Director Jack Clayton brought in the great writer Truman Capote to add some Freudian undertones to a script that he considered to be too much of a straightforward horror film.