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Since Halloween is only about two weeks away, it’s the ideal time to hip readers to Criterion Collection’s new release on Blu-ray/DVD of The Innocents (1961), one of the very best movies about ghosts ever made. I would stress about ghosts, because one of the major achievements in the film is its fully sustained ambiguity. The ghosts might very well be real (we can see them, after all), but they might also be only a fantasized projection of the film’s neurotic, obsessive protagonist.
Either view has merit. Still, regardless of one’s interpretation, the movie excels on all points — it’s literate and intelligent as well as genuinely spooky and creepy.
Based on Henry James’s famous short novel, The Turn of the Screw (you can’t get more impressive literary genes than that!), The Innocents is about spinster governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr), assigned to care for and educate two young orphans, Miles and Flora, at an elegant but remote country estate. At first, Miss Giddens is thoroughly charmed by the two young “innocents,” but she soon begins to suspect that there’s more to the children — and more to the estate itself — than meets the eye.
Several chilling events, encounters and suspicions soon have Miss Giddens convinced that the children are being haunted by the specters of the former governess, Miss Jessel, and the nefarious Peter Quint, the deceased groundskeeper. The spirits’ intent, according to Miss Giddens, is to renew their former “abominations” and “horrors” through Flora and Miles. Miss Giddens, however, is just as determined to “save” the children from “the devils,” a struggle that will produce unexpected and tragic consequences.
Practically a perfect film, there is never a false note or misstep in The Innocents. Kerr, previously nominated for six Oscars, was overlooked for her marvelous performance in this film, probably because it was touted as a “horror” movie. The two children, Pamela Franklin and Martin Stephens, are equally terrific, by turns charming and eerie. The atmospheric black-and-white cinematography by Freddie Francis is stunning, and Jack Clayton’s direction is flawless. Finally, special mention needs to be made of the subtle but incisive screenplay, mostly written by Truman Capote, taking a break from his obsessive research for In Cold Blood to bring the dense prose of Henry James to life on the screen.
Ten years later, in 1971, Michael Winner, another British director, returned to James’ novel in the form of a prequel. The Nightcomers makes explicit just what was going on between Miss Jessel and Peter Quint and how the two kids came under their influence. Marlon Brando, who would star in both The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris the following year, is this film’s standout, playing Peter Quint as a disenfranchised Irish laborer whose sadistic relationship with the initially repressed Miss Jessel (Stephanie Beacham) looks ahead to the controversial sexual hijinks of Last Tango. With Flora and Miles, however, Peter is more of a kindly father figure and mentor than anything else, though the snooping kids eventually extrapolate far more from his “lessons” than he ever intended.
The Freudian impress is top-heavy (unlike The Innocents), the kids are more obnoxious than sympathetic or creepy, and the fates of Miss Jessel and Peter are sensational rather than credible.
Nonetheless, if you like The Innocents you’ll have reward enough watching the marvelous Brando do his thing.
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