with Dmetri Kakmi

The Innocents

England, 1961

Director: Jack Clayton

Cast: Deborah Kerr, Megs Jenkins, Martin Stephens, Pamela Franklin, Michael Redgrave

In the Gospel of Thomas, the world’s first Jungian psychologist, Jesus Christ, says what you do not bring forth will destroy you. In other words, what is inside you will either save or bring calamity. It’s wisdom Miss Giddens, a vicar’s daughter, might well heed. Though in her new employ as governess at Bly country estate she gives every impression of having forgotten, bringing a metaphoric roof down on her head.

To say Miss Giddens is hopeless at her job is an understatement. I’d hate to be the one she asks for references for her next post, if she ever gets out of Newgate prison or Bedlam. I can just picture future job interviews. 

“Name three achievements from your last job.” 

“I had a secret crush on my boss, drove one of his wards to an hysterical mental breakdown and caused the death of the other.”

 “Excellent. When can you start?”

To be fair, Miss Giddens is not only inexperienced and out of her depth. She is also sexually repressed, overly devout, naive and gives every impression of being a well-meaning basket case. You know she’s trouble by the way she says she loves children more than anything else in the world. Only a self-absorbed man focussed on his pleasures would put her in charge of two young charges in a remote estate. 

All this might be understandable if Miss Giddens is in her twenties, as is the case in Henry James’ novel The Turn of the Screw. But it’s unforgivable in a woman of 40, which was Deborah Kerr’s age when she starred in the film. Admittedly. Kerr was imposed on the director by the studio; it would be interesting to know who Clayton might have chosen had he been free to do so.

Oddly enough this minor misstep does not damage the film one iota. Such is the forces of Clayton’s control of his material, and his intense collaboration with cinematographer Freddy Francis and script writer Truman Capote (playwright William Archibald is credited but we know 90% of the script belongs to Capote) that the film is an improvement on what is possibly the most celebrated ghost story in the English language. 

In the end we are left with an eerie psychological ghost story that explores the nexus between fantasy and reality, and repressed adult sexuality rubbing up against budding child sexuality. I dare say two scenes will raise eyebrows in our prurient, censorious age.

Clayton told Kerr to pitch the performance at an ambiguous level and she is expert at unsettling the viewer, making us question whether what is going on is real or if it exists solely in the governess’ feverish mind. Miss Gittens is the ultimate unreliable narrator and she cuts a pitiful if increasingly alarming figure when her mania kicks in. No wonder Nicole Kidman drew inspiration from Kerr for her performance as the equally deluded mother in The Others (2001). 

From the opening credits, The Innocents is an exercise in destabilising an audience through cinematic artifice. Every technique known to the filmmaker is put to use to create a shifting, sliding, melting irreal space that mirrors the governess’ tenuous grasp on reality. It also captures the way memory works, overlapping and confusing one incident with another and creating a story that may or may not have anything to do with what is actually happening.

When the film begins, for the first 40 seconds the screen is dark and we hear a bird sing. Two hands clasped in prayer intrude into the darkness and we hear murmured prayer and sobs. This is Miss Gittens at the tail end of her ordeal. The flashback begins when the credits stop and we work our way to the tragic climax. 

Throughout Clayton insisted on a wide-screen ration with minimal lighting and large areas of darkness that engulf characters. Even exteriors feel claustrophobic and oppressive, a sense of evil and corruption ever present. Apparently, Freddy Francis painted the sides of the lenses with black paint to create an “elegiac” focus, giving the film a rich if unnerving texture. Characters are often filmed in bold close up, the deep focus allowing more than one character to be clearly seen at the same time, with profiles at the centre of the screen, as if they’re simultaneously hiding something and creating overwhelming intimacy, as if we are beside them and involved in the action. 

To create the melting, sliding mood mentioned earlier, Clayton worked closely with editor Jim Clarke to craft elaborate superimpositions and lingering cross dissolves between scenes. This is particularly effective during a memorable dream sequence that may or may not incorporate real action. The protracted, almost suspended in time, feeling the cross dissolves create makes us feel as if we too are dropping through different layers of consciousness and reality. 

The result is one of the most beautifully unsettling ghost stories in existence. And a perfect trophy for the most unhinged employee of the year.

Oh, children, the new governess is here!

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Dmetri Kakmi is the author of The Woman in the Well, The Door and Other Uncanny Tales, Mother Land, and When We Were Young (as editor). He is now working on a crime novel called The Perfect Room.