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Once in a while comes a film that reminds me why I love cinema so much. Yesterday evening was one of those times. As I sat down in my darkened living room to watch this still amazing film, right from the start I knew I was in for a treat. I was not disappointed. At all.

What can I say that hasn't been said over and over about this film? How about, that it's still able to shock after all these forty odd years? Definitely so. That it's still able to confound and disorientate the viewer until the very end like very few? You bet your life it will!

Freddie Francis offers us a sparkling B/W cinematography to rival grand cinematic achievements such as Bergman's The Magician or Fellini's Dolce Vita. All throughout the film you can't help but notice this - and thankfully this new DVD shows it!

So, do yourself a favour and go watch this ASAP - and this goes for horror movie lovers and all the rest as well. This is filmmaking at its very best.

Annie
How does Georges Auric's score come across on this DVD? I been thinking of picking this one up, agree a great film!

In fact, I was going to mention this in my first post and somehow didn't, so here goes: top marks for the audio mixing on this DVD! The sound effects are great and the soundtrack though sparse and not very attention-calling, is rendered beautifully. This DVD is a gem all around and well worth the wait. I only wished there was an audio-commentary present as extra or at least a small featurette for this great, great film. It truly deserves it.

I thought this film was shockingly mature and disturbing for it's time. The final sequences are burned into my memory and I've only seen the film once, over a year ago. I wouldn't want to give anything away, but I would hope that anyone on this board who is interested in psychological dramas would check this movie out ASAP.

DrewReiber wrote:I thought this film was shockingly mature and disturbing for it's time.

I know what you mean! I kept asking myself how did movie-goers might have felt like when they first saw it! Very confrontational stuff indeed. Very unnerving in places. But always very effective.

It's a great film and well worth picking up. I first viewed twenty five years ago as a young child and it had a lasting effect on me(particulary the opening credit sequence)

Makes a great double bill with Wise's The Haunting.

DVDTalk reviews it:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=17665

Don't read it if you haven't seen it. It's spoiler filled.

I remember watching this film as a child while it was on tv, and being duly unnerved despite having seen many horror films during my youth. There was something altogether more disturbing and distressing in this movie than in other genre offerings, probably because the menace lay always so palpably under the surface, and was so intangible, that the events taking place gained such an unsettling quality as a result. Of course, I'm trying to rationalize this after about a decade.

Nevertheless, the final scene is burned into my memory so clearly that I'm still put off by it.

This, and Night of the Living Dead--still my favourite horror film--are the only horror films to have had such a lasting effect on me that I can still feel the original terror and uncomfortableness of first watching them, where so many others have faded in memory.

The Innocents owes me a good night of sleep! Last night I bought the DVD blind and watched it immediately after arriving home. My goodness. The film's shocking, jaw-dropping brilliance and artistry threw me off guard. The cinematography is luminous, so very powerful and effective that an impossibly great number of images will creep into your mind and stay there. After watching the film the images and the eerie music kept spinning in my mind as I laid down to sleep and of course, I didn't sleep a bit. The Innocent is really that strong and chilling.

I believe in ghosts because I saw one. Fourteen years ago, my ex-lover and I were sitting watching some TV in a brightly lit room and then suddenly, an old man floated across the room passing us towards the corner of the room on our left side. We froze for a moment to digest what we had just seen. My ex turned to me and I asked him if he saw the same thing. We described the old man exactly the same right down to every detail. The old man's face was very vivid but his torso was blurry.. and his legs were invisible. All in fog-like, sorta transparent greyish-white. That house where we saw the ghost belonged to my ex's mother and it's been known as haunted for generations. The mother ran into the ghost numerous times and my ex bought the house recently and rents it out to a couple who repeatedly tells him they experience some weird sightings in that same house.

Back to The Innocents, it's incredibly amazing how the film holds up so well after so many years (40+ years!). And it's still downright scary!

PS I don't mean to be rude since this is a cinema-focused forum. Please give me the opportunity to do this. I just finished reading Jim Grimsley's Dream Boy and I feel this strong urge to sincerely recommend this beautiful book to the whole world. Majestic majestic.

Watched it for a second time last night and it still was able to make me gasp for air in parts and left me shaking by the time it ended! I never would have dreamed of the power lurking beneath this fabulous motion picture and the way it is able to affect me on so many different levels. Wondrous, really.

This time around, it was a completely different experience because I already knew the story of course but I also had time to distill some of the film's themes and questions that it asks between these two viewings. Final result: I loved it even more! I only wish I could talk more about it without spoiling it for those who have not seen it.

I have a question though: are there major differences between The Innocents and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James from which it was adapted?

Annie Mall wrote:I have a question though: are there major differences between The Innocents and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James from which it was adapted?

It's been a couple of years since I last saw the film -- or read the story, for that matter -- but IIRC there are few major differences between James' story and Clayton's film. In fact, it's remarkable just how closely Clayton sticks to the plot, characterizations, and dialogue. Probably the biggest difference is that Clayton more or less endorses the view that the ghosts are indeed the product of Deborah Kerr's character's mind, whereas James leaves it even more ambiguous. (This is pretty much the point Gelnn Erickson makes in his review at DVD Talk.) Other than that, the film increases the amount of dialogue somewhat, creating a few exchanges that didn't exist in the story, but they don't amount to much.

Of course, the biggest difference is that you don't get James' wonderful prose. Unfortunately, there's just no way that any film can capture the language of a master prose stylist. Though I'll definitely admit that Clayton's film is, by far, the most satisfactory adaptation of a James novel or story -- even better than the Merchant/Ivory attempts.

For hard-core "Turn of the Screw" fans, there is also Benjamin Britten's quite eerie operatic adaptation -- and a couple of productions of this opera have made it onto video/DVD, I believe.

tryavna wrote:

Annie Mall wrote:I have a question though: are there major differences between The Innocents and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James from which it was adapted?

Of course, the biggest difference is that you don't get James' wonderful prose. Unfortunately, there's just no way that any film can capture the language of a master prose stylist. Though I'll definitely admit that Clayton's film is, by far, the most satisfactory adaptation of a James novel or story -- even better than the Merchant/Ivory attempts.

I agree about the quality of Clayton's adaptation. It is indeed one of the very best films of James' work.

But I think it's important to add quickly that Clayton's is a brilliant reading of the James story, it is just one reading. The Turn of the Screw is a story that lends itself to various ways of reading it. It's a story best read in a group, because each person will see the story as something else.

Summing, the main thing missing from Clayton's adaptation is the ambiguity of the novella. It's a work that can be viewed in a number of ways.

For fans of music, there is an excellent BBC film of the Britten opera, which is an even more sexual reading of the work than the film. It's also one of the best examples of filmed opera that I have seen.

kschell wrote:But I think it's important to add quickly that Clayton's is a brilliant reading of the James story, it is just one reading.

Summing, the main thing missing from Clayton's adaptation is the ambiguity of the novella.

I thought that was pretty much what I said when I wrote the following in my original post:

Probably the biggest difference is that Clayton more or less endorses the view that the ghosts are indeed the product of Deborah Kerr's character's mind, whereas James leaves it even more ambiguous. (This is pretty much the point Gelnn Erickson makes in his review at DVD Talk.)

Just rewatched this wondrous movie yet again (horror movies always work best in the Summer) and was bowled over once more by the ravishing visuals on display on what is truly a master class of B/W scope cinematography.

But what struck me most this time around was the very original and inventive use of soundscapes and sound editing. Wonderful soundtrack apart, what I took from the movie was the hypnotic use of reverberating sounds and the wailings and the whisperings. Creepy stuff and very effective.

Anyway, if you follow this link here, you'll find a wonderful Kate Bush song, inspired by this movie itself: it's called, quite appropriately, The Infant Kiss.

Lino wrote:Just rewatched this wondrous movie yet again (horror movies always work best in the Summer) and was bowled over once more by the ravishing visuals on display on what is truly a master class of B/W scope cinematography.

But what struck me most this time around was the very original and inventive use of soundscapes and sound editing. Wonderful soundtrack apart, what I took from the movie was the hypnotic use of reverberating sounds and the wailings and the whisperings. Creepy stuff and very effective.

Oh yes. Same thing here. I get bowled over by this film every time I watch it. For me, it remains one of the most powerful and brilliant horror films of all. The images of the ghosts, very simple as they are, are downright creepy! There is another dimension going on: it's either Kerr actually sees the ghosts or she goes wacko, putting the children through hell. And we will never know which.

The performance of the little guy Martin Stephens in that movie as Miles is so fantastic (and so mature he is absolutely completely above the Kerr character and actually condescends to her from on high in a perfectly aristocratic manner) I simply cant fucking believe it every time I watch it. I can thank this forum and specifically the "person" of Mr McMurphy for his ranting about this film in some other thread (before the bfi came out tho I confess I have the R1 Fox) for my seeing this film as Id never even (believe it or not) even heard of it.. and I was a major horror fanatic when little.

I believe if FW Murnau were still alive in the 60's, this would have been something like the kind of work that would have constituted his "old man" film, like Dreyer's Gertrud or Bunuels Obscure Object.

So what the hell happened to that brilliant little kid? He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth a movie or two after The Innocents.

HerrSchreck wrote:I can thank this forum and specifically the "person" of Mr McMurphy for his ranting about this film in some other thread (before the bfi came out tho I confess I have the R1 Fox) for my seeing this film as Id never even (believe it or not) even heard of it.. and I was a major horror fanatic when little.

I'll always remember seeing The Innocents the first time on television sandwiched in a triple bill between The Lady In White and Stanley Kwan's Rouge on Christmas Eve (!) night 1996. And what was on the other side at the same time? Carnival of Souls! It didn't seem seasonally appropriate but I wasn't complaining!

I ran the projection for a stage show version of this, which, excepting the acting, was pretty lacklustre. My actual job was to work a laptop that changed the scene in the background from sunny to rainy (one photo of a Japanese garden either darkened or lightened; the guy who did the photos was incredibly proud of his amazing brightness/contrast-adjusting job) with the fading transition in Powerpoint. Our ghost sounds were more like farting noises amplified through huge subwoofers.

I'm pretty interested in seeing the film despite hearing the script run through about thirty times (though, honestly, I never want to hear that damn "What shall I sing" song again). I've heard good stuff about the cinematography.

BTW, R1 dwellers, the BFI DVD is the version to own:

DVD Extras include a commentary with Professor Christopher Frayling, the original trailer for "The Innocents", the Oscar and BAFTA award-winning short film "The Bespoke Overcoat" directed by Jack Clayton, 1955, 33 mins (Clayton's first film as director) starring Alfie Bass and David Kossoff, a stills gallery including original costume designs, publicity posters, press books and production pictures and a booklet including film notes by Jeremy Dyson (BBC's "The League of Gentlemen").

colinr0380 wrote:

HerrSchreck wrote:I can thank this forum and specifically the "person" of Mr McMurphy for his ranting about this film in some other thread (before the bfi came out tho I confess I have the R1 Fox) for my seeing this film as Id never even (believe it or not) even heard of it.. and I was a major horror fanatic when little.

I'll always remember seeing The Innocents the first time sandwiched in a triple bill between The Lady In White and Stanley Kwan's Rouge on Christmas Eve (!) night 1996. And what was on the other side at the same time? Carnival of Souls! It didn't seem seasonally appropriate but I wasn't complaining!

I saw this on tv when I was seven. I didn't know the title (there were interviews after and I caught the name The Turn of the Screw, which is the short story the film came out of, and even tho' I wasn't quite sure this was the title the name stuck with me), but I sat there like a masochist and watched the whole movie. Ever get the sense that you're watching something that on a gut level you know you should not be watching? Never felt it more clearly before or since. What made it all the worse is that I couldn't process what was going on, the psychological aspects being, naturally, beyond my reach, and the supernatural aspects never given form enough for me to understand on a monster or a horror level. All I knew is that I was watching very bad things happen.

Fantastic movie, tho', now that I've rediscovered it as an adult (and finally know its title). Don't regret watching it as a kid, it's a kind of seminal movie for me (Night of the Living Dead screwed me up worse anyway, which I still have recurring nightmares about).

Some favourite bits: the walk up to the house near the start, where the pleasant melody of the music is continually intruded on and must fight against the insidious counterpoint. The long shots of the 'ghost' woman in the pond, where you lean forward at the screen trying to confirm the sickening suspicion that there is something dreadfully wrong with her face. The ending.

Magic Hate Ball wrote:I ran the projection for a stage show version of this, which, excepting the acting, was pretty lacklustre. My actual job was to work a laptop that changed the scene in the background from sunny to rainy (one photo of a Japanese garden either darkened or lightened; the guy who did the photos was incredibly proud of his amazing brightness/contrast-adjusting job) with the fading transition in Powerpoint.

This sounds kind of interesting, even if it was lousy - was it really an attempt to reproduce the film on stage? The film itself is based on a play which I think is set solely in the drawing room at Bly, so you obviously didn't do that...

This has the best opening to any horror film I've ever seen - imagine seeing it in a pitch dark cinema full of frightened people... Just a black screen and that eerie song coming out of nowhere. I think Christopher Frayling says (on the BFI edition) that this was the first time anyone had the nerve to interfere with the Fox logo, so it would have been really unnerving in 1961 to hear that reassuring fanfare being replaced by 'O Willow Waly'. This film gently grabs you by your trembling balls and then spends 95 minutes tightening its grip. A perfect horror film.

What really surprised me when I first watched it (apart from those kisses...) was how good Michael Redgrave was in the role of the uncle. This character, though important, really only gets a brief mention in James's story, and I was worried the film-makers would try to shoe-horn in a more substantial 'love interest' element. But the scene (like all the other scenes not taken from the book) is really well written, and Redgrave is perfect: each line, each movement of the hand, each facial gesture tells you everything you need to know about the character and the impact he has on the governess.

You could read her subsequent actions as all being motivated, to some extent, by the feelings this man provoked in her, and Redgrave's barely suppressed hysteria, his very English pomposity, and his unexplained fear, all provide a kind of springboard for Kerr's magnificent performance. Just look at the way he tells her to 'Leave me alone' as he leans on the mantelpiece, just vaguely suggesting, with a sigh and a few facial tics, that the prospect of hearing news about these children fills him with terror.

Before the governess ever arrives at Bly, we're all set up to be just as paranoid as she is - and this, I think, is how the film retains the ambiguity of the book (aside from more obvious moments like the teardrop). Who wouldn't believe these children are haunted, when their guardian seems to quake at the very mention of their names ('Lovely names, don't you think?', he says sadly, as if to say 'Lovely names, shame they're possessed by demons') and the children themselves are so damn creepy?

HerrSchreck wrote: So what the hell happened to that brilliant little kid? He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth a movie or two after The Innocents.

HerrSchreck, here's Martin Stephens' IMDb biography:

Martin Stephens was the most popular child actor in Britain during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Having lost interest in acting as he became an adult, he moved to Belfast in 1968, where he studied architecture at Queen's University, Belfast. He later returned to England, where he pursued his new career in architecture and as a teacher of Meditation.

Sloper wrote:

Magic Hate Ball wrote:I ran the projection for a stage show version of this, which, excepting the acting, was pretty lacklustre. My actual job was to work a laptop that changed the scene in the background from sunny to rainy (one photo of a Japanese garden either darkened or lightened; the guy who did the photos was incredibly proud of his amazing brightness/contrast-adjusting job) with the fading transition in Powerpoint.

This sounds kind of interesting, even if it was lousy - was it really an attempt to reproduce the film on stage? The film itself is based on a play which I think is set solely in the drawing room at Bly, so you obviously didn't do that...

Actually, it was set in the drawing room. I didn't know there was a play beforehand (the copy of the script I had had a copyright date of 1963, so I just assumed), I guess that's what was put on. The play's pretty mediocre, actually. All the dialogue is blunt, and it sort of lead the audience by the hand. I suppose it didn't help that it was also ninety minutes of Californians trying to do English accents ("Whoy down't yew hahve a SCOWN?").

Sloper wrote:This has the best opening to any horror film I've ever seen - imagine seeing it in a pitch dark cinema full of frightened people... Just a black screen and that eerie song coming out of nowhere. I think Christopher Frayling says (on the BFI edition) that this was the first time anyone had the nerve to interfere with the Fox logo, so it would have been really unnerving in 1961 to hear that reassuring fanfare being replaced by 'O Willow Waly'.

Does Frayling really say that? (I have the BFI disc, but don't remember Frayling's comments regarding the missing fanfare.) If so, he's totally wrong. When working for Fox, Bernard Herrmann frequently omitted the fanfare (which Alfred Newman composed). I know it's missing from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, for instance. So it wasn't totally unprecedented.

But the film is absolutely wonderful and is one of those few literary adaptations that work extremely well in a classroom -- because of Clayton's very specific interpretation of the story (which not everyone who reads the story buys).

By the way, the play that Magic and others are referring to is pretty dreadful. As I recall, the play basically accepts the existence of the ghosts from the outset and thus completely jettisons ambiguity altogether. (Why bother adapting James if you're not going to incorporate his ambiguity?!)