#83: The Innocents

The Innocents

Jack Clayton
Initial release: November 24, 1961 (UK)

Ghost stories are one of the oldest forms of horror tale. They've come to represent everything from a fear of human mortality to a fear of unfinished business. The ambiguity in Jack Clayton's The Innocents, much like Henry James' 1898 novella The Turning of the Screw upon which it is based, suggests another theme: the power of the human mind to scare itself silly.

In late Victorian England, a young woman gets hired as a governess for the niece and nephew of an uncle who’s too busy being a wealthy socialite in London to care for a pair of kids. At first everything is fine, but over time, spooky things start to happen, and the governess, who isn't the most stable person in England, comes to believe that the estate is haunted and the kids are possessed. Tragic results ensue, because that's what happens when your babysitter is (possibly) nuts.

The decline of the studio system and the rise of more permissive social mores in the post-war period made for films pushing the envelope; filmmakers had started asking questions studio heads didn't want to hear: how could anything they make possibly be more offensive than what happened in the war? And while the change was somewhat gradual, going from the end of the war in 1945 with the return of men to the workforce (and a consequent uptick in conservative values throughout the 1950s) to the sudden collapse in 1966 of the Hollywood studio system and the Hays Code that it enforced, there was nonetheless a growing cynicism and desire for more psychological film amidst schlocky "genre" films and "creature features" reflecting anxieties over the specter of nuclear war. The Innocents sets itself apart from much of its brethren by possessing a sharply psychological bent, much of the script being written by none other than Truman Capote to elevate what might be a simple ghost story to something else. True to its source material, this has strong gothic overtones (creepy happenings at an isolated English manor? Check!) but there’s elements of a more modern sense of horror too, with intensely edited scenes, sound and musical cues way ahead of their time, and unusual framing.

But as sharply edited and composed the film may be, what really sets this movie apart is the ambiguity of it all. The original version of the script treated it as a straightforward ghost movie, but the final film, with its shocking ending, is ambiguous about whether or not the ghosts are real, or if it’s all in the heroine’s head. It leaves the audience guessing as to our heroine’s disposition towards the children. It’s one of those situations where, once the idea gets fixed in your mind, it becomes impossible to unsee that there’s an element of something extremely indecent going on, at least in her head. Of course, there’s lots of interpretations, and all are valid. But I think it’s clear that even if there are ghosts, even if there is something wrong with the kids, that doesn’t change the fact that our governess heroine is totally crackers.

Or is she? It's that very ambiguity that makes the film successful. It’s a brilliant take on the ghost genre that still feels fresh.

-june❤