The Nanny (1965) - film review

Joey Fane is the ten-year old son of a wealthy middle class couple living in an affluent part of London.  For the past two years, he has been confined to an institution for children with mental disorders.  His parents believe that it was he who caused the death of his younger sister and interpret his refusal to eat anything prepared by his nanny as an admission of guilt.  When Joey returns to the family home, he appears not to have improved.  He continues to taunt his nanny and will not eat the meals she gives him.  He makes a new friend in Bobbie Medman, the daughter of a neighbour.  Joey confides in her that it was his nanny, not he, who killed his sister, and he is just as certain that she intends to kill him next...

Gothic horror films featuring vampires, werewolves, Egyptian mummies and other ghoulish monstrosities, the studio also made a fair number of respectable thrillers set in the real world, of which The Nanny is undoubtedly one of the finest.  It is a low-key yet deeply disturbing work that has some similarities with Roman Polanski’s psycho-thriller Repulsion, released the same year, both in its subject – a latent mental disorder - and its chilling expressionistic style. 

In stark contrast to his later Hammer offering Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (which he made just before his premature death in 1971), Seth Holt directs the film with great flair and imagination, making the banal sinister and the unusual absolutely terrifying.  Harry Waxman’s black and white cinematography is what perhaps contributes most to the film’s unsettling claustrophobic mood which, with its unusual camera angles and stark lighting, harks back to the expressionist era of early German cinema.  Equally praiseworthy is Jimmy Sangster’s taut screenplay, an inspired adaptation of a novel by Marryam Modell.

The Nanny stars Hollywood icon Bette Davis in what is generally regarded one of the better roles of her declining years.  The actress is perfect for the part and succeeds not only in making her character, the seemingly benign nanny, utterly frightening but also in rendering her tragically sympathetic.  The later sequences in the film are among the most disturbing of any Hammer horror film and allow Davis to live up to her reputation as one of the silver screen’s most formidable acting talents.

There are some impressive contributions from Davis’s co-stars and the supporting cast, which includes some very familiar British actors.  Wendy Craig is convincing as the hopeless neurotic mother, bringing to mind the similar television roles that would later earn her celebrity in the 1970s – in hit shows such as And Mother Makes Three and Butterflies.  James Villiers and Jill Bennett are well-cast as the austere father and eccentric aunt respectively.  However, the only thesp who comes close to matching Davis’s star quality is the young William Dix, who, as the infant brat Joey, gives the film its focus and dramatic intensity, allowing Bette Davis to be so effective in her portrayal of the nanny from Hell.  The Nanny is an essential part of any horror film collection.

© James Travers 2009

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