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Home , Bunny Lake Is Missing, Jack Clayton, John Box, Martin Stephens (actor), Out of the Clouds, Pamela Franklin

February 10, 2009 (XVIII:5) THE INNOCENTS (1961, 100 min)

Directed and produced by Jack Clayton Based on the novella “” by Screenplay by William Archibald and Additional scenes and dialogue by Original Music by Cinematography by Film Editing by Art Direction by Wilfred Shingleton

Deborah Kerr...Miss Giddens ...Peter Quint Megs Jenkins...Mrs. Grose ...The Uncle ...Miles ...Flora Clytie Jessop...Miss Jessel Isla Cameron...Anna

JACK CLAYTON (March 1, 1921, Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK—February 26, 1995, Slough, Berkshire, England, UK) had 10 writing credits, some of which are (1996), Other directing credits: Memento Mori (1992), The Lonely Passion of Voices, Other Rooms (1995), (1995), One Judith Hearne (1987), Something Wicked This Way Comes Christmas (1994), The Glass House (1972), Laura (1968), In Cold (1983), (1974), Our Mother's House (1967), Blood (1967), The Innocents (1961), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Innocents (1961), Room at the Beat the Devil (1953), and Stazione Termini/Indiscretion of an Top (1959), (1956), Is a Battlefield American Wife (1953). (1944). (September 30, 1921, Helensburgh, , JOHN MORTIMER (April 21, 1923, Hampstead, , England, UK—October 16, 2007, Suffolk, England, UK) has 53 Acting UK—January 16, 2009, Oxfordshire, England, UK) has 59 Credits. She won an Honorary Oscar in 1994. Before that she had writing credits, some of which are In Love and War (2001), Don six best actress nominations: The Sundowners 1959, Separate Quixote (2000), (1999), Cider with Rosie Tables (1958), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), (1998), "" (1978-1992), "Paradise (1954), From Here to Eternity (1953), and Edward, My Son Postponed" (1986), "Brideshead Revisited" (1981), "BBC2 (1949). Some of her other films were The Assam Garden (1985), Playhouse" (1981), Rumpole's Return (1980), "Shades of Greene" Witness for the Prosecution (1982), The Arrangement (1969), The (1975-1976), "" (1975), John and Mary (1969), Gypsy Moths (1969), Prudence and the Pill (1968), Casino (1965), The Running Man (1963), and Royale (1967), The Night of the Iguana (1964), The Chalk Garden The Innocents (1961). (1964), The Innocents (1961), The Naked Edge (1961), Beloved Infidel (1959), Bonjour tristesse (1958), Kiss Them for Me (1957), WILLIAM ARCHIBALD (March 7, 1917, Trinidad, British West An Affair to Remember (1957), Tea and Sympathy (1956), The Indies—December 27, 1970, NYC) has 2 writing credits: The Proud and Profane (1956), The End of the Affair (1955), Julius Innocents (1961) and I Confess (1953). Caesar (1953), Thunder in the East (1952), of Zenda (1952), Quo Vadis (1951), King Solomon's Mines (1950), If TRUMAN CAPOTE (September 30, 1924, New Orleans, Winter Comes (1947), The Hucksters (1947), Black Narcissus Louisiana—August 25, 1984, Los Angeles, California) has 22 (1947), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Battle for Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—2 a Bottle (1942), Hatter's Castle (1942), Love on the Dole (1941), 125 film composing credits, among them Therese and Isabelle and Major Barbara (1941). (1968), Poppies Are Also Flowers (1966), Thomas l'imposteur (1964), The Mind Benders (1962), The Innocents (1961), La MEG JENKINS (April 21, 1917, Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, Princesse de Clèves (1961), Le Testament d'Orphée, ou ne me UK—October 5, 1998, Suffolk, England, UK) has 87 acting demandez pas pourquoi!/The Testament of Orpheus (1960), SOS credits, among them, "All Creatures Great and Small" (1990), Pacific (1959), The Journey (1959), Christine (1958), Bonjour "Strike It Rich!" (1987), "Young at Heart" (1980-1982), "Oh No, tristesse (1958), The Story of Esther Costello (1957), Celui qui It's Selwyn Froggitt" (1974-1977), "Armchair Theatre" (1964- doit mourir/He Who Must Die (1957), Les Sorcières de Salem/The 1974), The Turn of the Screw (1974), "Jane Eyre" (1973), A Crucible (1957), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Notre Dame Cuckoo in the Nest (1970), "Daniel Deronda" (1970), David de Paris/The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956), Le Mystère Copperfield (1969), School for Unclaimed Girls (1969), Oliver! Picasso (1956), Lola Montès (1955), Du rififi chez les hommes (1968), Stranger in the House (1967), "Dixon of Dock Green" (1955), La Chair et le diable/Flesh and Desire (1954), Father (1964-1965), Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), Murder Most Foul Brown (1954), (1954), Roman Holiday (1964), "The Old Curiosity Shop" (1962-1963), The Innocents (1953), Le Salaire de la peur/The Wages of Fear (1953), Moulin (1961), Indiscreet (1958), The Story of Esther Costello (1957), Rouge (1952), (1951), Orphée/Orpheus Out of the Clouds (1955), The Cruel Sea (1953), Ivanhoe (1952), (1950), Maya (1949), L’Aigle à deux têtes/The Eagle Has Two A Boy, a Girl and a Bike (1949), The Monkey's Paw (1948), Heads (1948), La Belle et la bête/Beauty and the Beast (1946), Green for Danger (1946), Millions Like Us (1943), and The Silent Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), L’Éternel retour/The Eternal Battle (1939). Return (1943), Le Corsaire (1939), La Mode rêvée (1939), La Rue sans joie/Street Without Joy (1938), Le Messager (1937), Un MICHAEL REDGRAVE (March 20, 1908, Bristol, England, UK— déjeuner de soleil (1937), Les Mystères de Paris/Mysteries of March 21, 1985, Denham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK) has Paris (1935), À nous la liberté (1931), and Le Sang d'un 72 acting credits, some of which are Rime of the Ancient Mariner poète/The Blood of a Poet (1930). (1975), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1973), (1971), Connecting Rooms (1970), David Copperfield (1969), FREDDIE FRANCIS (December 22, 1917, Islington, London, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Oh! What a England, UK—March 17, 2007, Isleworth, Middlesex, England, Lovely War (1969), The Heroes of Telemark (1965), Young UK) has 34 cinematography credits and 36 directing credits. He Cassidy (1965), Uncle Vanya (1963), The Loneliness of the Long won a Best Cinematography Oscar for Glory (1989) and another Distance Runner (1962), The Innocents (1961), The Wreck of the for Sons and Lovers (1960). Some of the other films he shot were Mary Deare (1959), Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), Law and The Straight Story (1999), Rainbow (1995), Princess Caraboo Disorder (1958), The Quiet American (1958), Mr. Arkadin (1955), (1994), Cape Fear (1991), The Man in the Moon (1991), The Plot The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), The Browning Version to Kill Hitler (1990), Brenda Starr (1989), Her Alibi (1989), (1951), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), (1945), Clara's Heart (1988), Code Name: Emerald (1985), Dune (1984), Jeannie (1941), The Big Blockade (1940), Stolen Life (1939), The Jigsaw Man (1983), The Executioner's Song (1982), The Twelfth Night (1939), and The Lady Vanishes (1938). French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Elephant Man (1980), Night Must Fall (1964), The Innocents (1961), Saturday Night MARTIN STEPHENS (January 30, 1948, Southgate, London, and Sunday Morning (1960), Room at the Top (1959), Time England, UK) has 14 Acting Credits: The Witches (1966), The Without Pity (1957), A Hill in Korea (1956). Most of his directing Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), The Innocents (1961), The jobs were paranoid psychotic creepy thrillers, such as "Tales from Hellfire Club (1961), Village of the Damned (1960), No Kidding the Crypt" (1996), Dark Tower (1987), The Doctor and the Devils (1960), A Touch of Larceny (1959), Count Your Blessings (1959), (1985), "Star Maidens" (1976), The Ghoul (1975), Legend of the The Witness (1959), Passionate Summer (1958), Harry Black Werewolf (1975), Craze (1974), Son of Dracula (1974), The (1958), Another Time, Another Place (1958), "Tales from Creeping Flesh (1973), Tales from the Crypt (1972), (1970), Dickens" (1958), and The Divided Heart (1954). Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), They Came from Beyond Space (1967), (1966), (1965), PAMELA FRANKLIN (February 3, 1950, Yokohama, Japan) has 53 Hysteria (1965), Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), The Evil acting credits, some of which are "Vega$" (1981), "Fantasy of Frankenstein (1964), Nightmare (1964), Paranoiac (1963), The Island" (1978-1981), "Trapper John, M.D." (1980), "The Hardy Brain (1962), and (1962). Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries" (1978), "Police Woman" (1978), "" (1977), The Food of the Gods (1976), "" HENRY JAMES, O.M. (April 15, 1843 – February 28, 1916) (from (1974), "Cannon" (1972-1974), "The Six Million Dollar Man" Wikipedia), “son of theologian Henry James Sr., brother of the (1974), "The Streets of San Francisco" (1974), The Legend of Hell philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice House (1973), Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies (1973), "Bonanza" James, was an American author. He is one of the key figures of (1972), Necromancy (1972), David Copperfield (1969), The 19th century literary realism; the fine art of his writing has led Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), The Night of the Following many academics to consider him the greatest master of the novel Day (1968), Our Mother's House (1967), The Nanny (1965), and novella form. He spent much of his life in England and Flipper's New Adventure (1964), The Third Secret (1964), The became a British subject shortly before his death. He is primarily Lion (1962), and The Innocents (1961). known for a series of major novels in which he portrayed the encounter of America with Europe. His plots centered on personal GEORGES AURIC (February 15, 1899, Lodève, Hérault, relationships, the proper exercise of power in such relationships, Languedoc-Roussillon, France—July 23, 1983, Paris, France) has and other moral questions. His method of writing from the point Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—3 of view of a character within a tale allowed him to explore the the the warm fleece-lined coats that surround him in the phenomena of consciousness and perception, and his style in later warehouse where he has worked forforty-three years. Morry sets works has been compared to impressionist painting. about making him a real custom-tailored coat, but before it is “…His imaginative use of point of view, interior finished the old man is fired and dies of the cold. But death does monologue and unreliable narrators in his own novels and tales not quiet Fender’s sense of injustice; his ghost returns, and with brought a new depth and interest to realistic fiction, and Morry’s reluctant assistance, filches one of the sheepskin coats foreshadowed the modernist work of the twentieth century. An from the warehouse. extraordinarily productive writer, in addition to his voluminous The critical response for The Bespoke Overcoat was works of fiction he published articles and books of travel writing, positively rhapsodic. Richard Findlater called this thirty-seven biography, autobiography, and criticism, and wrote plays, some of minute black-and-white movie “a splendid film—in a which were performed during his lifetime with moderate success.” revolutionary kind,” and coupled it with ’s wide- screen Technicolor epic Richard III as “two filmed plays from Jack Clayton, from World Film Directors, V. II. Ed John British studios which must surely be reckoned among the Wakeman. The H.W. Wilson Co., NY, 1988. Entry by Roy outstanding achievements of postwar cinema.” Leslie Wood was Sherwood. equally enthusiastic: “Producer-director Jack Clayton takes the picture at a tempo which establishes every British director and producer, born in point of the delightful friendship of the leading Brighton, Sussex, 1921 Until he was characters without undue hurry or overstress. fifteen he divided his leisure time The result is a delightful depiction of human between prize-winning amateur foibles. photography and training as a racing ice He has been well served by his director of skater—he reportedly stood an excellent photography Wolfgang Suschitsky, who lights chance of being chosen for the Olympics. the sets in a low key which enhances the Instead he ran away from his public otherworldliness of the whole and whose lenses school to enter the film industry in 1935 dwell lovingly on textures for their inherent joining ’s London Film beauty.” This small masterpiece carried off an Productions as a tea-boy. He was soon Oscar as best short, was selected as best short promoted to third assistant director, a job entertainment film at Venice, and received a that Clayton defines as”one how runs special award from the British Film messages for everybody, calls the , Academy—an array of honors that guaranteed and acts as a general dogsbody.”In this its wide release, in spite of its unorthodox capacity, and later as second assistant, he length. worked on Prisons Without Bars, Q Three years later came Clayton’s Planes, The Thief of Baghdad, and Major screen version of ’s best-selling Barbara, among other films. During the novel Room at the Top, about a young same period he also served as an assistant working-class accountant and war veteran in the cutting rooms. () who makes it to the “top” In 1940 Clayton enlisted in the Royal Air Force and by impregnating the daughter of a rich industrialist. The picture subsequently joined the RAF Film Unit, serving variously as was produced by James Woolf, who with his brother John had cameraman, editor, and director of the 1944 documentary Naples established Romulus Films as one of the most enlightened and is a Battlefield, about the problems of rehabilitating the shattered progressive of postwar British production companies. city—besides directing the film, he supplied the original idea and British cinema at that times was dominated by genteel shot seventy-five percent of the material. and class-bound entertainments that bore very little relationship to After the war Clayton worked as first assistant director the realities of postwar life. The “angry young men” and the on ’s While the Sun Shines (1947), as production kitchen-sink realists” had already launched their revolutions in the manager on Alexander Korda’s An Ideal Husband (1948), and as novel and the theatre, but with few exceptions the movies associate producer on a number of notable films including continued to deny the existence of a working class whose Thorold Dickinson’s The Queen of Spades (1948), ’s problems might be given serious attention. As Alexander Walker Moulin Rouge (1953) and Beat the Devil (1953, Henry Cornelius’ says, Room at the Top “was the first important and successful film I Am a Camera (1955), and David Miller’s The Story of Esther to have as its hero a youth from the postwar working class,” and it Costello (1957), for which he doubled as second unit director. He permanently altered the social content of British cinema. It was also produced Gordon Perry’s Sailor Beware, Maurice Elvey’s innovative in other ways too, introducing a protagonist who Dry Rot, Ken Annakin’s Three Men in a Boat, all released in coldbloodedly uses sex to advance himself socially and a girl who 1956, and ’s The Whole Truth (1958). acknowledges that sex is actually pleasurable. Meanwhile Clayton was establishing himself as a By no means all of the British critics welcomed these director of small output but considerable distinction. His first developments. An anonymous one in complained that short film, made for a mere £5,000, was released amid general the hero, Joe Lampton, “is more of a cad than a card. The acclamation in 1955. This was The Bespoke Overcoat (which members of the town’s upper set...display the most deplorable Clayton also produced), adapted by from a story manners….Still, perhaps, such people exist.” American critics by . The picture tells of the friendship of two poor were quicker to appreciate the film. Arthur Knight wrote that its in London’s East End, Morry the tailor (David Kossoff) and characters “connive, commit adultery like recognizable (and not Fender (), a frail old clerk who desperately covets one altogether unlikeable) human beings. And the effect is startling. Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—4

One feels that a whole new chapter is about to be written in (1964), ’s novel about a much-married woman motion picture history.” The film won two Oscars (for Simone who is a compulsive bearer of children—indeed, having children Signoret’s moving and deeply sensual performance as Lampton’s is both a justification of her life and an escape from its uglier tragic mistress, discarded on his way up, and for ’s contingencies. The story, splendidly adapted by , screenplay), was chosen by the British Film Academy as the Best centers on her fourth marriage, which is threatened by the Picture of the year, and was sensationally successful at the box infidelity of her screenwriter husband. and Peter office. Finch play the lead roles and there is a haunting score by Georges There is no denying that Room at the Top change the Delerue. tone and complexion of British cinema in important and necessary The Pumpkin Eater received British Film academy ways, but seeing it today, it is hard to believe that it ever seemed awards for best actress and best black-and-white photography. revolutionary. In style, it is Philip Oakes wrote that “almost alone wholly traditional, and its theme, among British directors Clayton uses as Clayton was the first to point poetry both as a cutting tool and as a out, “is not different from those salve to make the hurt flesh whole. treated by Stendahl and Dreiser, He does not fumble. He knows what among others”; the director he is about. The Pumpkin Eater is his himself said some years later that most complex, most deeply felt film he did not “think very much” of and —without reservations—it is a the film, but “there was triumph.” A reviewer in the Times something in the air at the time agreed that the movie was “solid, that was right for it.” John Braine’s hero is eager to join the serious, intelligent, stylish,” but concluded that “it is also, for the establishment, not to overthrow it, and the movie scrupulously most part, quite dead.” There were many shades of opinion follows its model. In fact, as Alexander Walker says, “Clayton between these two extremes but the public, for the most part. was a traditionalist, as his subsequent films showed, working stayed away from this British exercise in the style of Antonioni. inside the British school of fine craftsmanship. He had a well- Clayton, who believes that it is critically important for a work of developed...moral sensibility towards his material, but no apparent art to be offered at the right “psychological moment,” thought it social or political allegiance whatsoever.” “a rather good film” but suspected that its time-juggling script and Clayton had seized on Braine’s novel more because he adventurous camerawork was ahead of its time, and there is some thought it “truthful about relationships between people” than evidence that this view is correct. because of its social concerns. In this almost accidental way he After another three-year silence came Clayton’s fourth had gained an international reputation as the pioneer of a socially feature, Our Mother’s House. Yet another literary adaptation, it conscious “new wave” in Britain. It was a role he did not care for, was based on Julian Gloag’s novel about a family of children as his next picture made clear. After turning down a flood of who, fearful of being sent to an orphanage when their mother dies, offers over the next three years, he chose a subject that could bury her in the garden and make a shrine of her grave. This hardly have been more remote from the grimy provincial bizarre plot begins to go awry when their wayward father turns naturalism of Room at the Top—a screen version of Henry James’ up. Clayton coproduced the movie for MGM with Martin quietly chilling ghost story The Turn of the Screw. It deals with a Ransohoff. He cast as the father and elicited governess (Deborah Kerr) who finds herself struggling for the excellent performances from the children, and the film was chosen souls of the two children in her care against the corrupt and as the official British entry in the Venice Film Festival. But again malevolent spirits of her predecessor and that woman’s lover. there were mixed reviews and the picture was another financial As Isabel Quigley wrote, “from Braine to James yawn failure. Ann Pacey wrote that Clayton, “using colour for the first such vast gaps of temperament, age, style, and outlook that you time, broods in eerie closeups over a home so obsessed with wonder how Clayton has got inside James’s skin enough to make religious fanaticism and death that sickness becomes almost you feel him, not so much in the dialogue (though that, by tangible. The main trouble with the film is that in spite of its William Archibald, Truman Capote, and John Mortimer, is ability to grip and chill it remains obstinately unbelievable and extremely and quite unobtrusively good), as visually, in a walk, a unconvincing.” moment, a hand, the light, the curtains shuffling, everything Clayton’s most ambitious film followed after an even before you in its mannered, secret, and alarming way.” And John longer interval than usual, several abortive projects having been Coleman thought that “Georges Auric’s score nicely alternated abandoned along the way. His $6.5 million remake of Scott with animal noises and silence, and the brilliant photography of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1974) has a screenplay by Francis Freddie Francis, sharp and hazy by turns, make this an Coppola, photography by , design and exhilarating piece of high-class hokum.” But not everyone was costumes by and Theoni Aldredge. Jay Gatsy (Robert satisfied with the film. Some critics thought that Clayton had Redford) had long ago been jilted by the spoiled, lovely Daisy failed to make up his mind whether the two ghosts were to be (). Having made an illicit fortune, he takes a house on regarded as “real” or as the products of the repressed heroine’s Long Island, just across the bay from where Daisy is living with imagination; this ambiguity, it was suggested, had spilled over her boorish husband (). Gatsby had not been rich into the imagery, which ranges from stock gothic effects to enough or polished enough for Daisy; now he is at least rich, as he genuinely disturbing touches (a beetle trickling out of the mouth demonstrates by holding a string of colossal parties that he never of a stone Cupid; a little boy’s goodnight kiss for his governess bothers to attend. As trivial (and as beautiful) as ever, Daisy is that turns into an adult and passionate one). impressed and for a little while won by this romantic gangster. Another three years passed before this “choosy” and But in the end she and her husband unite to protect themselves at eclectic director found his next subject in The Pumpkin Eater Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—5 the outsider’s expense, and Gatsby is shot dead in his own the moderns, the classics, any music” and pursues the swimming pool, a victim of mistaken identity. characteristically unconventional hobby of pigeon breeding. As Fitzgerald recognized, his greatest book is short on motivation and works more like a poem than a novel. It is Raymond Durgnat “Jack Clayton” in The St. James Film virtually unfilmable, and Clayton’s careful, lengthy adaptation Directors Encyclopedia. Andrew Sarris, Editor. Visible Ink, does not begin to solve the problems it presents. The result was Detroit/NY/Toronto/London, 1998. very harshly treated by many reviewers. However, Penelope Giliatt found much to admire in this “slow, graceful film” and so ...His penchant for themes of melancholy, frustration, obsession, did Nigel Andrews, who thought the early scenes, at least, had hallucination, and hauntings are also amply evident. been “done faithfully and atmospherically.” But even Andrews found it “a film that gives us too long to digest the rich period Clayton attracted much critical praise, and an Academy atmosphere—endless summer afternoons, endless parties, endless Award, with The Bespoke Overcoat, a “long short” brought in for sequences wandering through the Twenties opulence of Gatsby’s £5000; writer Wolf Mankowitz adapted Gogol’s mansion—and too little of the story….After a promising tale of a haunted tailor to London’s East End. Clayton’s first beginning, Clayton’s film leaves precious little echoing in our feature was Room at the Top, from John Braine’s novel. Laurence minds except the pretty period images and the bouncy period Harvey played the ambitious young Northerer who sacrifices his music.” true love, played by , to a cynical career-move, impregnating an industrialist’s innocent daughter. Its sexual In his seventh feature film, Something Wicked This Way frankness (as the first “quality” film to carry the new X Comes (1983), a Walt Disney production with a screenplay based certificate) and its class consciousness (its use of brand names by Ray Bradury on his own novel of the same title (1962), being as snobbery-conscious as ’s—though lower Clayton returned to a subject that had engaged him in his class) elicited powerful audience self-recognition. It marked a adaptation of Henry James—the relation between childish major breakthrough for British cinema, opening it to other “angry innocence and adult corruption. young men” with their “kitchen-sink Once again Clayton mixes cliches realism” and social indignation of cinematic horror with (though politically more disparate than disturbing and original special legend has it). effects, and once again critical Clayton kept his distance response was generally too literal- from such trends, turning down both minded to appreciate the Saturday Night and Sunday Morning complexity of the task he had set and The L-Shaped Room, to select a himself. Using the small-town very “literary,” Victorian, ghost story, setting characteristic of horror The Innocents, from Henry James’s movies, Clayton narrates a The Turn of the Screw. Deborah Kerr Faustian fable in which a carnival played the children’s governess who run by a Mephistophelean sees ghosts by sunlight while battling showman (Jonathan Pryce) and a to save her charges from possession siren temptress () offers by the souls of two evil, and very to fulfill the desires of its patrons sexual, servants. Is the lonely at the cost of their lives and souls. governess imagining everything, or Parallel to this conventional but projecting her own evil? The expertly managed plot runs the psychological drama of the town Pumpkin-Eater adapted Penelope Mortimer’s novel about a librarian and his son (Jason Robards and Vidal Peterson). In the mother of eight (Anne Bancroft) whose new husband, a film course of thwarting the evil designs of the carnival, the librarian’s scriptwriter, bullies her into having a hysterectomy. In Our son and his friend (Shawn Carson) acquire an understanding of Mother’s House, a family of children conceal their mother’s death their elders. from the authorities to continue living as a family—until their A writer in Film Dope has suggested that Clayton’s scapegrace father (Dirk Bogarde) returns and takes over, central theme is “the collision of innocence with corruption,” but introducing, not so much “reality,” as his, disreputable, reality. Clayton himself says that “there is no pattern to my pattern” and, The three films are all but a trilogy brooding with elsewhere, that he is “totally intuitive in everything about “haunted realism” over the psychic chaos between parental— filmmaking. I don’t work by intelligence; I have to feel it, not especially mother—figures and children caught in half-knowledge think it. If I make the illusion work for me, the feeling is the of sexuality, death, and individuality. Atmospheres sluggish or victory.” Penelope Huston says that “Clayton is one of the turbulent, strained or cavernous, envelope women or child-women perfectionists: an interpretive director, rather than one of those enmeshed in tangles of family closeness and loneliness. If The who creates from the ground up, but also a filmmaker who would Innocents arraigns Victorian fears of childhood sexuality, it rather take his own line than get caught up on any of the acknowledges also the evil in children. The Pumpkin-Eater treadmills.” balances assumptions of “excessive” maternal instinct being a A shy, lanky man, Clayton has been married twice, to neurotic defense by raising the question of whether modern Christine Norden and to Katherine Kath: both marriages were superficiality is brutally intolerant of maternal desire. Our dissolved. He speaks very quietly and Douglas Keay says that Mother’s House concerns a “lost tribe” of children, caught “you’re surprised, and then somehow not at all surprised, to hear between the modern, “small family” world, infantile over-severity he has a violent temper.” He loves “all kinds of music, old jazz, (with dangers of a Lord of the Flies situation) and adult Clayton—THE INNOCENTS—6 dissipation (with Dirk Bogard somewhat reminiscent of The person narration and the camera as third person, and the relegation Servant). … of Fitzgerald’s narrator to onlooker status. Even in the lesser Clayton’s “family trilogy” achieves a strange osmosis of films, “shifting emphases” (between gloss and core in Gatsby, 1940s “lyrical realism” and a more “calligraphic” sensitivity, of space and emotion in Wicked) repay reseeing, and Clayton’s strong material and com[plicated interactions between profoundly combinations of fine literary material with a troubling different people. The resultant tensions between a central temperament make powerful testimony to their time and to subjectivity and “the others,” emphasise the dark, confused, abiding human problems. painful, gaps between minds. If the films border on the “absurdist” experience (Pinter adapted the Mortimer), they retain Full text of Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” is online at the richness of “traditional” themes and forms. Critics (and http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JamTurn.html collaborators) keenly discussed shifts between Mortimer’s first

COMING UP IN BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XVIII: Feb 17 HIGH AND LOW/TENGOKU TO JIGOKU 1963 Feb 24 Ján Kadar & THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET/OBCHOD NA KORZE 1966 March 3 Jean-Pierre Melville LE CERCLE ROUGE 1970 March 17 , THE LONG GOODBYE, 1973 March 24 Andrei Tarkovsky: NOSTALGHIA1983 March 31 Larisa Shepitko THE ASCENT/VOSKHOZHDENIYE 1977 April 7 REDS 1981 April 14 32 SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD April 21 Pedro Almodóvar /TODO SOBRE MI MADRE 1999

3 X 3 @ AKAG THURSDAY EVENINGS AT THE ALBRIGHT-KNOX The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is presenting an international film series on Thursday evenings. Entitled 3 X 3 @ AKAG, this new series is being organized and presented by University at Buffalo professors Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian and features three films by three distinguished international film directors each month: (1894–1979) in February, (1920–1993) in March, and Yasujirō Ozu (1903–1963) in April. Screenings are free with Gallery admission and will begin at 7:30 pm in the Gallery auditorium. Prior to the film each week, Jackson and Christian will introduce the film and briefly discuss the filmmaker’s career and historical influence. After the screening, they will join the audience in a discussion of the film, the filmmaker, and the impact of both on world cinema and other arts. The scheduled films are:

FEBRUARY – FEATURED DIRECTOR: JEAN RENOIR February 5 – Grand Illusion, 1937 This week: February 12 – La Bête Humaine, 1938 February 19 – Rules of the Game, 1939 MARCH – FEATURED DIRECTOR: FEDERICO FELLINI March 5 – I Vitelloni, 1953 March 19 – 8½, 1963 March 26 – , 1965 APRIL – FEATURED DIRECTOR: YASUJIRŌ OZU April 9 – Late Spring, 1949 April 16 – Tokyo Story, 1953 April 23 – Floating Weeds, 1959

CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: [email protected] …email Bruce Jackson [email protected] ...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com ...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] ....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News