"The Children's Hour" (1961)

 
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 15, 2011 10:22 pm    Post subject: "The Children's Hour" (1961) Reply with quote

I saw this movie at about the time when it came out, and I’ve always remembered it as an excellent movie. I wanted to see how it had held up over the years.

I still can’t fault it. Even in today’s very different climate of a greater tolerance for differences in sexual preferences, this movie stands the test of time.

You don’t have to buy into the 1950s rigidity, where everyone was supposed to march in lockstep with the dictates of social convention, to understand and appreciate what this movie is trying to say.

On one level, the movie’s “point” has nothing whatsoever to do with lesbianism. It is about the amount of damage that can be done by one person’s distortion of the truth.

A distortion of something that has been heard can be accidental or careless, but it can also be malicious.

In this instance we are up against the malice of one girl in an exclusive school for girls. We see how manipulative this child can be, but there is nothing supernaturally malign about her. She is “just” a child with a bent for causing trouble, and she is only too believable in her constant deceptions and the bullying tactics she uses with the other girls as well as with the adults who are unlucky enough to have to deal with her.

These are Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, both at their best as the two young teachers who head the small school in its first year. They have been friends since their late teens, but Audrey Hepburn is engaged to marry a doctor, and it looks as if the school partnership might end soon.

If there is a weakness in this movie, it is the doctor. Or maybe it is the actor who plays the doctor, but I suspect it’s the part as it was written. He goes through the film looking as handsome as somebody from Marlboro country but occasionally giving way to a frowning look of helpless woe as the situation develops alarming aspects.

He has one goofball trick in his bag, apparently: When he pulls away from the school after saying goodnight to Audrey Hepburn, he runs his car around and around the turn-around with a screeching of tires.

The second time I watched this movie, I already knew how it would end, of course, but as I was watching it, I kept wondering if there was any foreshadowing of the dénouement as the story unfolds.

If there is any, it is quite subtle. The story, written by Lillian Hellman, seems deftly handled from start to finish. Some might say that it verges on melodrama at about the time when Mrs. Tilford (beautifully played by Fay Bainter) seems to have an attack, but it is rescued by the thoughtfulness of the drama itself–the way it does not bludgeon us with its point but makes it nonetheless.

One girl with a malicious streak ruins the lives of several adults by a few carefully chosen but deceitful words, alleging that the two women in charge of the school are involved in an “unnatural” relationship–an allegation that as it happens is untrue but that should never have been made even if it had been true.

The story is very sad and only too believable.
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