The Innocents

The 1961 film The Innocents is based on the novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Originally, this was adapted for the stage and there is a theatrical feel to it. The setting is as ghostly and gothic as it gets in black-and-white British horror films - a country estate, way too big for its few inhabitants.

The focus of the story is on the new governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) and the two children she is hired to care for, Flora and Miles. The previous governess has died about a year before. Later we learn that she took her own life after the accidental death of her abusive boyfriend, who also worked on the estate as a valet.

Both, the former governess and the valet, appear to Miss Giddens as ghosts and she concludes that the children are possessed by the spirits of the lovers.

She takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of it all and - ultimately - save the children from the peril they are in. The two youngsters do appear to be rather mean spirited, especially the little boy. Miss Giddens' solution is to send off the staff and Flora and stay behind with just the boy, to help him freeing himself from his demon by facing him. It ends in tragedy.

Wonderful, classic film. The feel and setting was much later imitated in The Others, which I also recomend wholeheartedly.

8/10