Obsessed With Film

Greatest Movie Scenes #74 - THE INNOCENTS

Jack Clayton’s 1961 masterpiece The Innocents lasts as one of the most unnerving horror narratives in film history. The story of a governess (played by Deborah Kerr) who goes to a country house to look after two odd children, the film digs beneath the surface of Victorian gentility and conjures up a captivating, spine-chilling ghost story par excellence.

Is there really a malevolent haunting presence in the manor? Are the wicked spirits of the depraved former residents exerting evil influence on the children, or is the repressed Miss Giddens’s imagination fabricating fantasised threats? The suspense and lack of certainty, emphasised in the sound (cutting from that creepy child humming to unbearable silence) and hazy visuals, means we spectators can never be sure. Wound up tighter than piano wire and sucked into the tension, the bleak black-and-white presentation makes it all the more engrossing and anxiety-inducing for the audience.

The scene in which Giddens appears to see a figure at the top of the tower is a prime example of destabilising ambiguity in The Innocents. The way a bug crawls out from the mouth of a cherub statue and disgusts the governess as she goes about pruning roses also puts forward the theme of darkness beneath the veneer of Victorian civility. With great performances from Kerr and Martin Stephens (the spooky youth who delivered an equally scary performance as the chief child in Village of the Damned) and excellent direction from Clayton, The Innocents remains a petrifying motion picture.

You can view all our Greatest Scenes by clicking HERE. If you find any broken links or wish to request a scene (make sure you leave a paragraph saying why you recommend it), Contact Me and let me know.

categories - Greatest Scenes, Jack Clayton, The Innocents

No Comments »

There are no comments yet. Head on over to our FORUM instead... although chances are there ain't much happening there either. Start a new topic or something, maybe one day it'll take off.