Film Review
With its theme of lesbianism and suggestion of paedophilia,
The Children's Hour was a daring
film for the era in which it was made and attracted a certain notoriety
in some quarters. Today, attitudes are somewhat different,
homosexuality is no longer the great taboo that it once was and most
reasonable people have no difficulty distinguishing it from
paedophilia. Modern audiences will be surprised by the lengths
the film goes to avoid direct references to the sexual act between two
women. The L word isn't mentioned once and the scenes in which
the dreaded deed is alluded to are played without audible
dialogue.
Just as old films that tried to tackle racial discrimination are now
hard to stomach (
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
being a case in point), so
The
Children's Hour is a difficult film to engage with, for the
simple reason that the world it portrays has long ceased to
exist. The main value of this film is that it provides a record
of contemporary attitudes to lesbianism, which, even as late as the
early 1960s, was regarded as unnatural and socially unacceptable as
having webbed fingers by the majority of the population. It is
interesting to compare this with Basil Dearden's film
Victim,
which was released the same year but deals with homosexuality and the
stigma associated with it much more openly.
The Children's Hour started
out as a stage play written in 1934 by Lilliam Hellman. After the
play proved to be a hit on Broadway, it was made into a film by William
Wyler, entitled
The Three
(1936). The Hollywood production code at the time strictly
prohibited any mention of homosexuality and so the plot was changed so
that the scandal revolved around an illicit
heterosexual affair. A
quarter of a century later, the same William Wyler was able to remake
the film with the references to lesbianism reinstated, albeit obliquely
to avoid a public and critical backlash.
Although its portrayal of attitudes towards homosexuality dates it
badly,
The Children's Hour
still works as a potent morality tale, showing how easily and
irreversibly reputations can be destroyed by thoughtless malice.
The performances, particularly from the three leads, are exceptional,
with Shirley MacLaine turning in one of the best dramatic turns of her
career, in a part that could not be further from her more familiar
comedic roles. There is a subtle ambiguity to
Audrey Hepburn's portrayal which implies, possibly, that
her character may not be as straight as she protests she is,
making the film's ending all the more poignant. Franz Planer's sombre black-and-white photography
endows the film with a solemn bleakness which exteriorises the anguish
of the protagonists as their world falls apart, whilst reminding us
that, at the time the film was made, same sex relationships were
something which belonged in the shadows of human experience, something
sordid and ugly. Today, many will find the film sordid and ugly,
but for very different reasons.
© James Travers 2009
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Next William Wyler film:
The Collector (1965)
Film Synopsis
Karen Wright and Martha Dobie are two former college friends who run a
private school for young girls in New England. Through hard
work and self-sacrifice, they have made the school a success and have
just begun to turn a profit. With her efforts focused on the
school, Karen has had to put off marrying her boyfriend, Joe Cardin, a
reputable paediatrician. One of the girls at the school, Mary, is
the granddaughter of Joe's aunt, the wealthy Amelia Tilford. When
Karen punishes Mary for lying, the girl takes her revenge by telling
her grandmother that her two teachers have been pursuing a lesbian love
affair. Outraged, Mrs Tilford swallows the lie and immediately
withdraws Mary from the school. She passes this news onto all of
the other parents, who react in the same way. In no time, Martha
and Karen have lost all of their patrons and face financial ruin.
Only Joe seems to doubt the rumours but Karen knows the damage has been
done, that she will lose him as well as the school. Once a
reputation is destroyed, it cannot be redeemed...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.