The Innocents (1961) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 9

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Something is scaring the children into scaring the adults!

The Innocents is a classic horror film that sends shivers down your spine using the most benign delivery system–the audience’s imagination. There’s no gore and no jump scares, but this film will cool your blood with some beautiful photography and some creepy interactions.

Before Viewing

Billed as the first horror film for an adult audience, the black and white trailer has a woman (Deborah Kerr) wandering an old mansion with a candelabra. The narrator lets viewers know that this is based on a Henry James story and gives the writing and directing credits. A mysterious man peers through a window and Ms. Kerr tries to explain it to an older woman. Children appear to be taunting the woman, as intertitles  keep asking “Do they ever return to possess the living?” Just who are The Innocents of the title?

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

In London, sometime in the 19th Century, Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) interviews with The Uncle (Michael Redgrave) for a position as governess for his niece and nephew, Flora (Pamela Franklin) and Miles (Martin Stephens). The Uncle believes that she will make a fine person to watch the children, after their last governess, Miss Jessell (Clytie Jessop) died. He also specifies that he is much too busy to be disturbed by anything, granting Miss Giddens “supreme authority.” Miss Giddens takes a carriage out to the country estate in Bly and meets with Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins), the family housekeeper.

Miss Giddens meets Flora, who knows immediately who she is. Flora also shows off her tortoise, Rupert. Mrs. Grose tells Miss Giddens that Flora is a sweet girl, but sometimes runs off and can be difficult to find. Flora says how much she misses her brother, but that he’ll be coming home soon. Mrs. Grose mentions Miss Jessell, and fleeting refers to another man–but not The Uncle–before changing topics. After bathing Flora that evening, she says her prayers–and wonders if the Lord would leave her to walk around the estate if she dies and wasn’t a good girl.

A letter arrives from Miles’ school indicating he has been expelled (for being an “injury to others”) and is due home soon–just as Flora had mentioned. After Miles arrives, Miss Giddens sees a strange man atop one of the towers. Walking up to the tower she only finds Miles playing with his birds. Miles is precocious and seemingly beyond his years. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he responds that he only wants to be a boy living at Bly. One evening the children convince Miss Giddens to play Hide and Seek before bed. While she is looking for them she spies a strange silhouette crossing her path in a darkened hall. Miss Giddens also finds a small music box with a ballerina in it that plays the song Flora is always humming–O Willow Waly.

Miles discovers Miss Giddens and begins choking her, though he seems unaware of the actual pain he is inflicting, believing he is playing. Miss Giddens sees a shadowy man outside the window and finds out from Mrs. Grose that it must be Mr. Quint, the dead valet. He slipped on an icy patch one evening and broke his neck. Young Miles, whom he was close with, found him the next morning. Mrs. Grose also says that Quint and Miss Jessell were something of an item, using various rooms of the mansion for their affair, regardless of who could hear them. Miss Giddens sees a younger woman standing among the reeds by the lake, right where Miss Jessell was said to have drowned.

Miss Giddens is afraid the children have been possessed by the spirits of Quint and Jessell and vows to save them. Miles’ behavior becomes more dramatic; sleepwalking in the garden and keeping a dead bird beneath his pillow. He kisses Miss Giddens passionately on the lips, to her surprise. Realizing the children cannot see the ghosts, but she can, Miss Giddens confronts Flora which traumatizes the girl. Flora is sent away with Mrs. Grose for safety, while Miss Giddens stays with Miles, who claims to be the man of the house.

In an attempt to get Miles to confront the horrors she sees, Miss Giddens presses Miles for the reason he was expelled. He snaps, calling her names in a stern and adult manner. She sees the man in the window again, apparently controlling Miles. She demands that Miles say Quint’s name. He does and then collapses. Miss Giddens comforts him, telling him he’s safe–but then realizes he’s dead. She gently kisses Miles on the lips, cradling his body.

“All I want to do is save the children, not destroy them.” – Miss Giddens

Anyone who has never seen The Innocents should make an attempt to see it. It may be the scariest film reviewed on 31 Days of Horror this year, and that’s not something I say lightly. It doesn’t seem like a film that would necessarily be scary. People more familiar with modern horror and its trappings, from approximately 1974 onward, may look at a black and white film from 1961 and assume that it cannot produce the same amount of terror as something like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or The Amityville Horror. They would be incorrect. Due to the constraints of the era which didn’t allow for overt graphic killings or gore, films from this time had to make up for it in other ways. The Innocents creates tension and terror with light and shadow while taking the characters, and the audience, on a chilling ride that literally makes your spine tingle.

Released a year after Psycho, The Innocents was an adaptation of the Henry James 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw. It was the first of almost a dozen adaptations of this work, and possibly the best. This was the third film by director Jack Clayton, who was known for Room at the Top. He would go on to make the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby and 1983’s extremely spooky film Something Wicked This Way Comes, also an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story. William Archibald, who had previously written the screenplay for Hitchcock’s I Confess, adapted this story along with novelist Truman Capote, who took time off from writing his most famous book, In Cold Blood, to work on this screenplay. Without these men of strong vision, The Innocents would not be a very interesting film. Archibald and Capote created strong characters with interesting relationships and hidden subtexts. Clayton found the best actors to portray the characters and helped arrive at a vision for the film. But the person who made The Innocents work, with its shadowy corridors lit by candelabra and its deep focus shots was cinematographer Freddie Francis. This film was Francis’ tenth film (he also shot Room at the Top for Clayton in 1959), before turning to directing. He returned to cinematography in 1980 with another amazing black and white film, The Elephant Man, along with Dune and the 1991 remake of Cape Fear. The film includes bright exteriors with plenty of detail and dark interiors where the light seems to be absorbed by the darkness. Yet there’s still plenty visible, unlike some modern films and shows that shoot in such a low level of light it’s difficult to discern anything. He showed everything that Clayton wanted exposed and only a brief hint of other things hiding in the darkened halls.

The cinematography is one of the elements that makes The Innocents so haunting. Having had the opportunity of seeing this film in a theater, I can attest that the texture of the backgrounds within the shadows–where the ghosts live–still comes out on the Blu-Ray version of the film. Being a British horror film in the early 60s, it was inevitable to be compared to the Hammer horror films of that era. Films such as Christopher Lee’s Dracula, Peter Cushing’s The Curse of Frankenstein, Lee and Cushing’s The Mummy, and Oliver Reed’s The Curse of the Werewolf. They were all opulent, colorful horror films that took advantage of the technicolor process of the time, mostly with blood effects. Other films from this time embraced the idea of gothic horror, which includes The Innocents. Roger Corman’s House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum. These films created an air heavy with dread and a suffocating reminder of the past. The Innocents share many of these same gothic themes, but does so within a rich black-and-white tapestry, creating an even older-looking film that stifles the senses. With this, The Innocents inspired future haunted house and supernatural films such as Robert Wise’s The Haunting, Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Just who are the innocents of the title? Judging by the definition of a pure, guileless, or naive person, the children, Miles and Flora, seem like the best answer. They are even referred to as such by Miss Giddens when she’s talking to Mrs. Grose, at about an hour into the film. It’s a scene when Grose assumes that Giddens is accusing the children of monstrous behavior, yet she is only trying to understand their minds–feeling that they may be possessed by spirits. Later, Miss Giddens uses the phrase “innocent” to mock Mrs. Grose. Having seen the ghost of Miss Jessell, and assuming that Mrs. Grose was able to see it as well, Miss Giddens is shocked when the housekeeper says she did not need to pretend to believe Flora’s explanation. Giddens compares her to a “complete innocent,” as in a naive and young child who cannot see the truth. The children are more than likely innocents, but ones that were robbed of that quality at too early an age. Mrs. Grose tells of the depravity of Quint and Miss Jessell (which rings a little close to Jezebel) having relations inside “as though they were dark woods.” Taking no care that the children might have seen or heard them. Grose also tells of the intensity of Quint. A man who would strike a woman, and Jessell being a woman who loved such things. The adults’ torrid affair tarnished the innocence of the children, only to spoil it even further after their deaths as the intensity of their relationship bled back from the afterlife to possess Miles and Flora. Miles is arguably the one affected the worst by the “power” that Quint had over people. Drawn to him, as a puppy, when Quint was alive. Possessed by his passion and intensity after he died. Miles’ attacks on Miss Giddens, both aggressively when he chokes her and passionately when he kisses her, are the final losses of his innocence.

The other question of innocence that arises is in regard to Miss Giddens. Is she an innocent? If anything she is most definitely naive. Her interview with the Uncle confirms as much, with her indicating that if she gets this job, it will be her first posting. She believes that the Uncle’s quote that he has “no room for [the children], neither mentally nor emotionally,” is honest and heartless and is the first of many naive assumptions. Coming into contact with such spirited (in the non-supernatural sense) children and learning about her predecessor’s predilections inside the Manor must have also come as a surprise to her. There are others who believe the level of supernatural and psychic activity at the Bly house stems from Giddens’s sexual repression. Perhaps her untapped lust allows the spirits of the two carnal lovers to more easily reappear. Remember, nothing happened at the Manor or with the children before she arrived. Was Giddens the only one to be able to see the ghosts? Neither Mrs. Grose nor Flora ever confirmed seeing anything. Flora, in fact, was traumatized by Giddens’s accusations that she was lying. Miles too never admitted to seeing the ghost of Quint on the parapet. Though if he was possessed by such an entity, the denials would have been par for the course. Through some fault of her own, naivety, inexperience, or repression, Miss Giddens failed the children. Her goal was to save them–perhaps in the spiritual sense–and she lost both of them; one to madness and one to death.

One of the spookiest moments in the film is Miss Giddens wandering through a hallway, lit only by her candelabra when a shadowy figure suddenly crosses in front of her. The camera lingers for too long, allowing the audience to wonder if something may still pop out and say “boo!” It’s an expected scare, but also unconventional in the way that it is created in so much of a silhouette. This may be the first horror film to utilize a scare like this. After this, it was common to see fleeting glimpses of “something” rounding a corner in a haunted house film. Perhaps the most extreme example is the scene in the hospital of Exorcist III. If you’ve seen it, you’ll never forget it. The Innocents is such a rich film, both visually and metaphorically, that it offers so much more for the genre. It is a shining example of how best to create a film with mood and atmosphere and scare the pants off your audience without resorting to cheap scares. These scares will stick with you for quite some time.

Assorted Musings

• Cinematographer Freddie Francis has an illustrious career as a director, having worked almost exclusively on horror films including The Day of the Triffids, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Tales from the Crypt (1972), and Tales That Witness Madness among others.
• Martin Stephens is best known for this role and his freaky child, David Zellaby, from 1960s Village of the Damned.
• Pamela Franklin starred as the medium Florence Tanner who is most in touch with the spirits in another haunted house film from 1973, The Legend of Hell House.
• Deborah Kerr would appear in one other horror film, Eye of the Devil in 1966.
• The events of this story are revisited in Mike Flanagan’s Netflix miniseries The Haunting of Bly Manor.