Genuine creepiness in glorious black and white
Based on Henry James novel, The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents is a thoroughly absorbing chiller. Director Jack Claytons masterpiece is a study of deepest dread. It still has the power to disturb some sixty years later. Filmed on location at Sheffield Park and Gardens, this lovely Gothic chiller does justice to its literate source. Clayton is fully aware that here, in and around the Gothic abode, it’s more often than not…
The Lubitsch Touch
Ernst Lubitsch was on a roll in 1943; since 1938 he had made Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, That Uncertain Feeling and To Be or Not to Be, five classics one after another. Although he would complete two more films and leave one unfinished, Heaven Can Wait was his last undisputed masterpiece.
Lubitsch was a man destined to take the play in which this film is based, to screen. The results are amazing.…
A cathedral of a film
The first time you see this miracle of a film you will be confused because you will constantly lose yourself in it. It is like a labyrinth, constantly branching out in different directions, getting lost in petty details, getting caught in the mystery of a “glue man” sabotaging young girls by ruining their hair with glue and even getting caught up in a local war between little boys. However, there is a method in all…
A gripping expierience from start to finish.
To me, this movie is Kurosawa at his best and most subtle. Every shot is composed, measured, and done just right. Not all films have to have bombs exploding, chase scenes, or a few good scares to affect you. Sometimes just a man on a train en route to what he knows will be a catastrophe to him and his world is enough to make you thank the heavens for a story well told.
