The Innocents dvd movie.|
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List Price: $14.98 Our Price: $10.99 You Save: $3.99 Features • Closed-captioned • Black & White • DVD-Video • Anamorphic • NTSC In Theaters : 1961 DVD Release : 06 September, 2005 |
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The Innocents description The definitive screen adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, the 1961 production of The Innocents remains one of the most effective ghost stories ever filmed. Originally promoted as the first truly "adult" chiller of the big screen (a marginally valid claim considering the release of Psycho a year earlier), the film arrived at a time when the thematic depth of James's story could finally be addressed without the compromise of reductive discretion. And while the Freudian anxiety that fuels the story may seem tame by today's standards, the psychological horrors that comprise the story's "dark secret" are given full expression in a film that brilliantly clouds the boundary between tragic reality and frightful imagination. In one of her finest performances, Deborah Kerr stars as Miss Giddons, a devout and somewhat repressed spinster who happily accepts the position of governess for two orphaned children whose uncle (Michael Redgrave) readily admits to having no interest in being tied down by two "brats." So Miss Giddons is dispatched to Bly House, the lavish, shadowy estate where young Flora (Pamela Franklin) and her brother Miles (Martin Stephens, so memorable in 1960's Village of the Damned) live with a good-natured housekeeper (Megs Jenkins). At first, life at Bly House seems splendidly idyllic, but as Miss Giddons learns the horrible truth about the estate's now-deceased groundskeeper and previous governess, she begins to suspect that her young charges are ensnared in a devious plot from beyond the grave. Ghostly images are revealed in only the most fleeting glimpses, and the outstanding Cinemascope photography by Freddie Francis (who used special filters to subtly darken the edges of the screen) turns Bly House into a welcoming mansion by day, a maze of mystery and terror by night. Sound effects and music are used to bone-chilling effect, and director Jack Clayton, blessed with a script by William Archibald and Truman Capote, maintains a deliberate pace to emphasize the ambiguity of James's timeless novella. The result is a masterful film--comparable to the 1963 classic The Haunting--that uses subtlety and suggestion to reach the pinnacle of fear. --Jeff Shannon |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | ;'Nother poem.... |
| The Turn of the Screw
The brilliant, blind woman Described for me her dreams: "They are transactional," she said. This meant moving, listening, sex, eating, But above all, conversation--talking With someone, or listening to others talk. She was an oxygen baby--born at the time When giving oxygen to the newborn Often resulted in blindness. Her parents were asked: do you want a dead baby, Or a blind one? A psychologist, she worked Sixty to eighty hours a week, With the lives of others. "But once," she said, with animation, "I had a seeing dream." "What was it?" I asked. "I dreamed I was looking up at a tall tower, and the sun was in my eyes, so it was Difficult to see the top. It was flat on top." "A battlement," I said, astonished. The sun was in my eyes! How could she see the sun in her eyes! Yet this sounded familiar to me. "Have you read The Turn of the Screw?' I asked . How would she ever have had time To read such a thing? "No...I don't think so," She answered. "Why do you ask?" "In the story, a governess of two small children, A boy and a girl, encounters--or perhaps she doesn't-- The ghosts of their former caretakers: An evil man, who died when he fell In a drunken stupor, and a woman, Who loved and mourned him till she killed herself. The governess tries to decide: what did these two Do to the children, and how Do their ghosts use them now?" "Oh my, "said my friend, appreciatively. "The first time she sees' him--or doesn't-- She is looking up at a tall tower, With the sun in her eyes, and sees a strange man standing there, On the battlements, who, When she looks again, Has disappeared." Quickly, she asked, "Did she know of him? Had she seen His picture?" "In the book, no; in the film, yes," I answered. "That is interesting," she said. "Was there anyone standing on your tower?" I asked, thinking perhaps she had read the story, After all. But, in the spirit of the book, she answered: "No. No one at all." |
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