Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU The film chooses to emphasize one aspect of Henry James's story. The absolute paranoia and even maybe worse, something like psychosis, of the main character who is given a name she never had in the novella, Miss Giddens, giddy indeed from even before the very start. This naming the unnamable makes it more normal whereas the whole film is going to show she is absolutely berserk, from the very first instant we see her. I will regret the age of the actress. This governess is supposed to be hardly 20 or over by one or two years maximum. The actress does not fit that assumption. She cannot be in her first job just out of her family. She is too old and she behaves and acts too old, and her immature psychosis in front of some fear that is her own and she turns into a fright, a panic, or even worse, does not fit with this too obvious age.Apart from that, right from the beginning she seems immature and emotional, like for example having the coachman stop at the gate for her to proceed on foot is absurd when you know everyone is waiting for her at the door of the mansion, servants and children (even if only one child at that moment). The fact that she finds the girl in the park around the mansion though she should have been at the door waiting for the arrival of the new governess is unacceptable even for a house where there is no master, except a housekeeper. The governess is at least surprisingly unaware of what she does not do right, but there is something wrong in the general picture.And sure enough the film insists on her becoming more and more deranged by all kinds of noises and fears she develops in an old mansion she is convinced is haunted in a way or another. The two dead members of the personnel become her fixation: the previous governess who killed herself in the lake, which is not the original version, and the valet turned house manager whose death is not made explicit in the way it happened. But the innuendo about an unacceptable pregnancy is pushed aside. It is even hinted that the previous governess was old and not so beautiful.The insistence on the relation between the children and these tow people is excessive and at the same time meaningless because the cause of the two kids coming under the guardianship of their uncle is not clarified enough and the two kids are not shown as they should: traumatized by the death of their parents, traumatized by their uncle sending them to this country mansion in some sort of exile, and traumatized by the death of the two people they had built a transference relation with. All that counts for nothing because it is not used except to build the phantasm of some haunting ghosts in the mind of Miss Giddens. And anyway what is wrong with a man teaching a boy how to ride a pony? You have to be particularly perverse to see some evil in that kind of action.As for the children being possessed by the ghosts, the film does not show it really. They are close and that is normal since they have survived together at least three traumatizing losses, and they feel Miss Giddens is not entirely sane from their very first encounter. Miles will even say so and Flora in her final temper tantrum says about the same thing. In fact the children are just at first testing the woman and then playing with her when they find out she is haunted by some fright of some ghosts she imagines around her. They may be cruel but they are not haunted. Miles is depicted as cruel as cruel can be when he pushes the woman into her most vulnerable unacknowledged mysterious psychological layers by kissing her on the lips. Note this game is maybe a little bit too strong for a ten year old boy, and it is not what the original novella says: Henry James showed in details how the nameless governess was emotionally attracted and that this attraction was sexually haunted by the belief that anything physical was wrong, especially for children, and yet at the same time this nameless governess was physically attracted by the boy she kisses and hugs at least profusely. Then the final death of Miles, rejecting Miss Giddens who is insisting on the presence of Quint's ghost, remains unexplained really. It appears as if it were a way to protect himself against Miss Giddens but that is overreacting really and the final scene of Miss Giddens kissing the dead boy on the lips is just absurd. She likes her children dead so that they run no risk to be perverted . . . by her, and yet she desecrates Miles with a necrophiliac kiss.The psychology of these two traumatized children is overlooked and the perverse desires of Miss Giddens are underrated, so that the film seems to have no real explanation: we are dealing with some unexplainable events, though these events can be entirely explained with a little of help from the first psychiatrist we can come across in the underground. The film is of course from the very early 1960s and that was a time when we considered psychiatry as a science of psychological diseases and we refused to consider non-clinical psychiatry explaining the behavior of people in a more meaningful way than behaviorism. And unluckily that's the final explanation that floats on top: the mansion is haunted and it took possession of its inhabitants, the children and the new weak and very obtuse governess. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Irishchatter This really does remind you of the old movie "Village of the Damned" and also "Jane Eyre" without the romantic setting! I thought Deborah Kerr was excellent at playing the young governess. She really is sweet and she doesn't need the role to prove that. She's a very talented actress and it's a shame that I've never heard of her before. Even if I watched "Village of the Damned" that she was in, I still didn't find out much about her until this movie!I thought Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin as the children were great little actors. When they said "dear" or "my love", it does creep you out especially in a horror setting like this. I wonder did they notice that they were doing a actual horror film or did they not bother their heads? It's interesting like in Village of the Damned, I could figure out that the children knew they were cursed but what about the kids in this film? That'll be a mystery for me haha!Anyways its a good film, I give this 8/10!

GusF Based on the 1898 novella "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James, this is a superb psychological / supernatural horror film. I have not read the original story but I understand that it sticks quite closely to it. The film is imbued with a wonderful sense of tension caused not so much by the admittedly very effective and memorable visuals but by the ambiguity regarding the exact nature of the events being portrayed, specifically whether they have a natural or a supernatural origin. It has a first rate script by William Archibald, Truman Capote and John Mortimer and the excellent direction of Jack Clayton is certainly up to the task. Much of the credit for the film's atmosphere has to go to the beautiful black and white cinematography of Freddie Francis, a master of his craft and a great director in his own right. I was particularly impressed the use of deep focus on numerous occasions and the interaction of light and shadow throughout the film.The film stars Deborah Kerr, probably my favourite actress of her generation, in an utterly fantastic performance as the fascinating character Miss Giddens. In spite of the fact that she has no previous experience, she is hired to be the governess of the orphans Miles and Flora by their emotionally distant uncle, who would rather spend his time cavorting in London and elsewhere than raise his charges. Miss Giddens loves children and looks forward to bonding with Miles and Flora over the course of many years but almost as soon as she arrives at the luxurious country estate Bly, strange things start to happen. She hears voices and she sees figures that cannot possibly be there and which no one else seems to be able to see. The figures in question are a man and a woman which Miss Giddens believes to be the ghosts of her predecessor Miss Jessel and the uncle's valet Peter Quint. She learns from the housekeeper Mrs. Grose that the two of them were lovers and were not great believers in discretion since their behaviour left very little to the imagination of the other servants and possibly even Miles and Flora. After Quint's death, Miss Jessel fell into a deep depression and committed suicide. Since Miles followed Quint around like a puppy and Miss Jessel was a mother figure to Flora, Miss Giddens concludes that both their strange behaviour and her experiences are being caused by Quint and Jessel taking control of the children. However, Mrs. Grose is rather less convinced.One of the major reasons why I found the film so effective is that I could never make up my mind as to whether Miss Giddens was entirely correct about Bly being haunted by the ghosts of dead servants or whether she is insane. There is ample evidence to support both scenarios but whenever I thought that I had decided on one of them, something else happened to make me reconsider. For instance, in the film's most frightening scene, Miss Giddens sees Quint at the window and his cold, piercing eyes make quite an impression on her. However, she had discovered his photograph in the attic only minutes earlier so he was certainly on her mind. She thought that he was the man that she had seen on top of the tower earlier but his face was not clearly seen so her mind may have been filling in the blanks. On the other hand, the children are very, very odd and there are a few moments where I thought that the supernatural explanation was the more likely one. Miles in particular is a rather disturbing child who is far too mature for his age, complimenting Miss Giddens in a very flirtatious manner and even giving her an inappropriate kiss on the lips at one point. As Miss Giddens thought, he may be possessed by Quint's ghost. Then again, it may be because he spent so much time with Quint when he was alive and he is imitating his inappropriate behaviour since he has no idea how to act around women. Flora is the more normal of the two children, comparatively speaking, but there are numerous moments in which it seems likely that she is in contact with or even possessed by Jessel's ghost. While the film most certainly belongs to Deborah Kerr, it has a strong supporting cast. Martin Stephens, presumably cast based on the strength of his performance as David Zellaby in "Village of the Damned" (1960), is incredibly creepy as Miles and it is easy to see why Miss Giddens suggests that there is something otherworldly about him. Pamela Franklin manages to be both sweet and a little off-putting as Flora. Her innocent face may hide a mind that has been corrupted by either natural or supernatural forces. Peter Wyngarde does not have any dialogue but he makes an unforgettable impression as Quint in the aforementioned window scene. Megs Jenkins is excellent as Mrs. Grose, who becomes increasingly concerned about Miss Giddens' mental health as the film progresses and perhaps with good reason. Michael Redgrave has a great cameo as the uncle, who is mentioned throughout the film but only actually appears in the opening scene. I think that Mrs. Grose and the uncle are the only characters whose roles are entirely straightforward, incidentally.Overall, this is an engrossing, thought-provoking and incredibly clever horror film which I have not been able to stop thinking about since I watched it. The title was very well chosen as it is unclear who exactly it refers to, which is rather appropriate under the circumstances.

Kowshik Tikadar Suv 1 of the most wonderful movie I've ever see...worth watching again, I am going to review this movie on psychological basis, which I believe it is and going a little deeper but not too far. This movie depicts a timeless problems of parents-child relationship and how you should grow your child without fear specially the fear of the God, Satan and related topics, and obviously when love becomes obsession how darkness arrive at the door of happiness do his duty by the help of peoples innocence. A victim child of believing god n devil by the religious conviction inherited by her parents (she mentioned dad but I believe both) and after growing up then becoming a governess who is really naive on her core, and find motherly love on these rather mature & talented children, who saw the reality by who knows may be the Satan. It shows logical contradiction if you try to differentiate so called God from one of his part the Satan, and both serves quite the same purpose or duty to the innocents, perhaps it is Swami Vivekananda's vision, and he is very right, once he said about a religious book that, it is better to play football than to read that holy book. I believe he was trying to say that you must maturely handle or read the book (the holy one) or not read it at all. I would say on the same tone that : it's better to have faith in a Dog than to the so called God/Satan. what? feels offensive enough well you should be, because that's the evidence suggests that's the reality we live in, I just remember 'Robin Hardy's film called the 'Wicker Man' 1973, its a great one. But to conclude about this movie, it's a wonderful story, even without its clear 'shining' of 'The Massacre of The Innocents' and the two paintings of Peter Paul Rubens on this subject. The best British horror film I've ever seen! Thank you!!!