The Innocents (1961)

Second viewing; first viewed on October 27, 1989.

Based on the novella The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James, first published in 1898.

At a country estate, a new governess is hired to look after two orphaned children. She  begins to have visions of dead people and to question the children's behavior.

A lot of care has been put on the aesthetics of the film, usually to good effect (though I cannot provide a perfect assessment of that for lack of a widescreen copy). The basic plot point is the possibility of deleterious influence that the children may have received from adults prior to the new governess's arrival. The ghosts as narrative devices serve two complementary purposes: providing clues for the new governess about the events prior to her arrival, and putting in doubt her sanity. The basic moral point is perhaps the danger of destroying what one is trying to save. An interpretive angle which I am not sure is in the novella, and is considered more controversial, is that of the psychological phenomenon of projection, especially in dealing with children. The governess might be projecting her own sexual fantasies onto her perception of the children. Thus, it is their very innocence which allows guilt to be projected onto them, as on a blank slate.

(pan-and-scan copy)

Rating: 71 (down from 85)