The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)

[Sloper]

Does Frayling really say that?

I'm afraid he kind of does, though I don't think he stresses the point.

Moral: never trust a man with a moustache.

[Magic Hate Ball]

By the way, the play that Magic and others are referring to is pretty dreadful. As I recall, the play basically accepts the existence of the ghosts from the outset and thus completely jettisons ambiguity altogether. (Why bother adapting James if you're not going to incorporate his ambiguity?!)

Honestly, I thought it was just me. The show has its moments; I'd always creep into the wings (it's a floor-level thrust stage) to watch the audience jump when Miles barks "AM I?", and the ghost effects were fun. The whole show's just so damn blunt and surface-level, there's really nothing you can get from the characters that isn't presented to the audience.

[tryavna]

By the way, the play that Magic and others are referring to is pretty dreadful. As I recall, the play basically accepts the existence of the ghosts from the outset and thus completely jettisons ambiguity altogether. (Why bother adapting James if you're not going to incorporate his ambiguity?!)

Honestly, I thought it was just me. The show has its moments; I'd always creep into the wings (it's a floor-level thrust stage) to watch the audience jump when Miles barks "AM I?", and the ghost effects were fun. The whole show's just so damn blunt and surface-level, there's really nothing you can get from the characters that isn't presented to the audience.

Well, I have to admit that I've only read the play -- not seen it performed. So I can imagine that some scenes/moments might work well with an imaginative director and enthusiastic cast. But as you say, everything about the play (as written) is on the surface, which is certainly NOT what you go to Henry James for in the first place. (By way of contrast, Ruth and Augustus Goetz's play The Heiress, which is based on James' Washington Square and was used as the basis for William Wyler's film, really "gets" what James was all about. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that The Heiress is actually an improvement on Washington Square, which may be James' weakest novel.)

At any rate, it is interesting that there have been several truly worthy film adaptations of James -- considering how "unfilmable" he seems when you're reading him and, of course, how spectacularly unsuccessful James' own forays into the theater were. I wonder if he would have appreciated the irony....

[Sloper]

A comparison with The Heiress is very apt, I think, though I disagree that it was an improvement on the novel. I think the Goetzes' genius in that case - especially in the screenplay, which is significantly different from the playscript - was to alter those elements in the novel which they knew would not 'work' dramatically. The most drastic alterations were of course to the final act of the story, which is (at least to me) incredibly moving on paper, but basically unfilmable. Look at the way Holland's superficially more faithful film of WS drags to a close for proof of this.

The Heiress is necessarily less complex and rich than the novel it was based on, but is no less powerful, or less 'ambiguous' I think - it alters but doesn't compromise. And this is also what makes The Innocents such a great Henry James adaptation, the best along with The Heiress.

As you (Tryavna) said before, The Innocents has a very specific interpretation of the story, essential to any good dramatisation of a literary text, and it does to some extent impose a reading on The Turn of the Screw...but again, it finds all sorts of ways to retain James's ambiguity, and to make that ambiguity the scariest thing about the film (just as it was the scariest thing about the book).

I get the impression people sometimes over-emphasise the degree to which the 'Freudian' reading of Screw dominates in The Innocents; to me, like the book, it works simultaneously as a literal ghost story, and the two sides to the reading are (almost) equally weighted.

[Jack Phillips]

Great post, Sloper. I think everything in it is spot on. =D>

[tryavna]

I get the impression people sometimes over-emphasise the degree to which the 'Freudian' reading of Screw dominates in The Innocents; to me, like the book, it works simultaneously as a literal ghost story, and the two sides to the reading are (almost) equally weighted.

I agree with both your points here, Sloper: The Freudian reading is by a wide margin the dominant reading of Screw (and by extension The Innocents), which means that other (equally justifiable) readings are sometimes marginalized. We do well to remember that the first two generations of readers almost unanimously viewed the story as a "literal ghost story." In fact, when Edmund Wilson proposed the "it's all in her head" interpretation, he was criticized so severely that he softened his essay for a time -- only to revise it back to its original form when his argument (not to mention Freudian-inspired literary analysis in general) gained more currency. So although I think Wilson's contribution was important (we wouldn't have the film The Innocents otherwise), his is not the only way to read the story.

I guess we just disagree about the relative merits of The Heiress and Washington Square. In my opinion, it's the weakest of all the novels by James I've read. I do like the ending and agree that, as James conceived it, it only really works on paper. (The play and film make it more "dramatic," as you say.) However, where The Heiress really improves upon the novel, for me, is in the relationship between the heroine and her father. In the original novel, James leaves their mutual love-hate relationship a bit too underdeveloped for my taste. As I recall, Washington Square has very little dialogue -- even less than was usual for James during his early career. So to actually "hear" the relationships develop in both the play and the film is a strong contribution on the part of the Goetzes (and Wyler). That's why I said I think the play/film is an improvement. There's more "showing" and less "telling," if that makes sense.

Of course, I should point out that I actually saw The Heiress -- and read the play -- before I read Washington Square, so perhaps that colored my opinion. (I remember being frankly disappointed to learn that some of the best lines in both the film and play were inventions of the Goetzes and not of James.) And I think I also knew by the point I read the novel that it was one of James' least favorite; he exlcuded it from the New York Edition after finding that he himself was unable to slog through it again twenty years later!

Anyway, I think we can certainly agree about the excellence of both The Heiress and The Innocents (the films).

[Tommaso]

I agree with both your points here, Sloper: The Freudian reading is by a wide margin the dominant reading of Screw (and by extension The Innocents), which means that other (equally justifiable) readings are sometimes marginalized. We do well to remember that the first two generations of readers almost unanimously viewed the story as a "literal ghost story."

I remember that years ago, when I was studying English literature, the James novella was used as a prime example in a course about ambiguity in literature. I don't remember neither the course nor the book too well now but got the distinctive impression that no reading that declares that the ghosts EXIST or do NOT EXIST does justice to the text. But it's interesting to see how the pendulum apparently has swung from one side to the other.

Talking of adaptations of the story into other media, I'd definitely recommend Benjamin Britten's opera version (1954). If I remember that one correctly, the ghosts are definitely real there, and Britten wrote some of his most haunting music for their parts. An incredible showpiece for his partner, Peter Pears, in any case. Check out the old Decca recording of it. It's mono, but still sounds good, and I never heard any other version that comes close in expressiveness.

[swo17]

For those with Netflix, The Innocents is available for instant viewing until the end of August.

[Sloper]

We do well to remember that the first two generations of readers almost unanimously viewed the story as a "literal ghost story."

I seem to (vaguely) remember reading somewhere that there were a couple of published articles suggesting somthing along the lines of "it's all in her head" in the 1920s or 30s, but which just didn't have as much impact as Wilson's. Although the Freudian reading obviously did introduce a lot of new ideas, I think anyone familiar with James's approach to the supernatural would have been inclined to read the ghosts in Screw as far more than just 'literal'. It's ages since I read the other ghost stories, but certainly in Sir Edmund Orme, Owen Wingrave, The Jolly Corner and so on, the supernatural is always a manifestation of something already present in the minds of the characters.

In 'The Private Life', one character literally ceases to exist whenever he is alone (or alone with his wife, much to her chagrin), while another is able to socialise happily at a party while his mute alter-ego sits upstairs, writing masterpieces. Which goes to show how comfortable James was about literalising his metaphors in 'supernatural' form.

Obviously, The Turn of the Screw isn't nearly as light-hearted as that story, and I do think the question of whether the ghosts actually exist or not is a central issue. But the mistake, as Tommaso says, is to be too either/or-ish about the 'reality' of the ghosts; it's perfectly reasonable to think that there are real ghosts, but that they are manifestations of emotional or psychological reality.

I can't say what I think the ghosts represent without becoming incoherent, but certainly another theme that runs through a lot of James's work is the abuse of children - often abuse that takes the form of exposing children to knowledge (of evil, sex, cruelty, or whatever) which they are not equipped to handle. Another, more general, Jamesian theme is the influence and impact people have on each other - the way one person can possess, or feed off, another - and in the light of these two themes it is easy to see how the ghosts in Screw could be real manifestations of some past abuse, and how the governess herself gradually comes to inflict her own brand of abuse upon Miles and Flora, the abuse in both cases taking the form of 'forcing knowledge' on children.

The interpretation in The Innocents really stresses the sexual side of things, suggesting that the dead couple introduced the children to specifically sexual knowledge; and so, as I think Frayling points out, it makes perfect sense to have the governess as a sexually frustrated, middle-aged Deborah Kerr, instead of the gauche 20-year-old she is in the book. It means that not only is the abuse inflicted by Quint described more specifically (and so made more real), but you can also see in exactly what sense such ghosts might issue from the mind of a woman like Miss Giddens. (A 20-year-old woman is, after all, a little young to be all that sexually frustrated, though of course her naivety about such things is central to the point of James's story.)

I'd definitely recommend Benjamin Britten's opera version (1954). If I remember that one correctly, the ghosts are definitely real there, and Britten wrote some of his most haunting music for their parts. An incredible showpiece for his partner, Peter Pears, in any case. Check out the old Decca recording of it. It's mono, but still sounds good, and I never heard any other version that comes close in expressiveness.

I've never really got into opera, but I did quite like this one, especially the parts for Quint and Miles - the first appearance of the ghosts, where they summon the children, is genuinely creepy. The only (not very good) production I've seen was a filmed version in which there did seem to be some implication that the governess might be dreaming up all the scenes in which the ghosts act 'independently' - but mostly they seemed to be quite real.

[Mr Sausage]

A 20-year-old woman is, after all, a little young to be all that sexually frustrated

Really? Because when you think about it a twenty-year-old's sex drive is going to be working at intense levels. When one's denied any outlet for those urges, due to societal, religious, or family constrictions, I'd say the frustration would be equally intense, and would have the energy of youth behind it. A middle aged woman is going to have a decreased sex drive, so while her frustration is no doubt compounded by time, it would be the result of less intense urges. Not to mention that for a young girl in the time period--especially if she is brought up to value chastity above just about all else, and likely has no recourse to information concerning it anyway--sex is going to seem strange and frightening, and have a nasty aura about it. So you get a push and pull between biological drives dimly understood, and psychological revulsion also dimly understood, compounded by a lack of experience.

James' choice seems apt to me. But I think the movie was right to go with Kerr, because it requires less historical understanding and is therefore likely to work better on a modern audience.

[MichaelB]

Really? Because when you think about it a twenty-year-old's sex drive is going to be working at intense levels.

A twenty-year-old man, certainly - but many women don't reach their peak until much later.

A middle aged woman is going to have a decreased sex drive, so while her frustration is no doubt compounded by time, it would be the result of less intense urges.

If she's around forty, the urges may actually be the strongest she's ever experienced, especially if her biological clock is about to run out.

[Sloper]

As a 24-year-old male I probably shouldn't comment on middle-aged female sexuality...

I wouldn't at all want to suggest that James made a 'bad' choice in making the governess young, though I'm not sure it's one of his more successful portraits of a very young woman; I guess she's writing from the perspective of middle age, though.

And yes, there are ways to make the sexual subtext work for a young woman - but Deborah Kerr in The Innocents makes the middle-aged frustration really central to the story, I think, and it feels like it wouldn't work if she were young.

She reminds me so much of a certain middle-aged woman I know, whose brows knit up in just the same way when she's angry, who has that same kind of frustrated self-righteous quiver in her eyes. And I've always guiltily suspected this woman of being a very sexually repressed person. It was terrifying to see her suddenly materialise in this film, screwing around with children...

[Mr Sausage]

Really? Because when you think about it a twenty-year-old's sex drive is going to be working at intense levels.

A twenty-year-old man, certainly - but many women don't reach their peak until much later.

Yes, the average peak is usually around thirty. But no one is going to convince me that a twenty year old girl's sex drive is any less intense because of that.

A middle aged woman is going to have a decreased sex drive, so while her frustration is no doubt compounded by time, it would be the result of less intense urges.

If she's around forty, the urges may actually be the strongest she's ever experienced, especially if her biological clock is about to run out.

Can't answer to that one. We're going beyond acceptable generalization and would have to deal with specific bodies. Anyway, I think my point was that both are capable of being sexually frustrated to the degree required by the Freudian reading of the story/movie.

[tryavna]

I think that Kerr's performance in The Innocents is brilliant, and I agree that it makes the "sexual frustration" angle work very well. However, I have absolutely no problem accepting that sexual frustration may be affecting James' original protagonist. It's important to remember that, in the original story, she describes her background as having been extremely austere and even repressive. (Her father's a minister, she belongs to a large family and doesn't have her own room/space, she's obviously sexually inexperienced and naive and she is smitten by the very first man she comes across when she leaves home (the Uncle), etc.) Furthermore, a number of cultural historians have pointed out that 19th-century British governesses were often taken advantage of sexually by their employers. As one of the few legitimate jobs that educated single women could take, the governess often occupied a liminal class position: too educated to be wholly at home among the other servants (as Mrs. Grose's treatment of the character in the story shows) but not really part of the family either. Yet their intelligence, youth, and inexperience made them frequent targets of predatory fathers. Since James also makes it clear that the Governess reads romantic literature (perhaps Jane Eyre?), it's entirely possible that she wants to be swept off her feet by a powerful and aggressive man but is simultaneously repulsed by the thought of the physicality that would entail (as represented by the shadowy figure of Quint and the tales she hears of Quint's relationship with Miss Jessel). So as opposed to, say, a 40-year-old spinstress' sexual frustration, a younger governess' frustration might be the result of an inability to explore/express her emerging sexuality in a safe and satisfying way (i.e., with another actual person). That kind of frustration seems just as real and unhealthy -- particularly, as Mr. Sausage points, in a Victorian context.

Also, Sloper, there were two or three critics/reviewers predating Wilson's essay who anticipate Wilson's interpretation. (Edna Kenton was one, and part of her 1924 essay is reprinted in the Norton Critical Edition.) But all of them tiptoe carefully around the idea. It really was Wilson's essay that revolutionized most people's understanding of the story.

As for how likely James' original audience were to be inclined to view the supernatural elements with suspicion is difficult to gauge. For one thing, although several of his "ghostly" stories are extremely popular and frequently anthologized now, James didn't really write that many of them, and they were never collected on their own during his lifetime. Out of, what?, 112 stories, roughly 18 can be classified as "ghostly" (which is how many Edel does). And only 11 of those predate Turn of the Screw, with the immediately preceding one ("The Friend of the Friends") coming two years before. Plus, many of them were published in December issues of various magazines -- a "Christmas tradition" in the 19th century (which the framing story of Screw actually alludes to). Finally, most of the earliest reviews of the story (many of which are also included in the Norton Critical Edition) take the supernatural elements literally, even while acknowledging James' greater artistry than the run-of-the-mill ghost story writer. And based on James' Preface to the New York Edition, it doesn't seem as though he was inclined to correct that point of view.

Of course, I don't mean to imply that I disagree with either you or Tommaso. I definitely believe that there's a lot more going on in the story than the "are they real or aren't they?" binary. I do, however, think that one of the central issues is most definitely sexual knowledge (or the Governess' fear that Miles has accessed sexual knowledge that she has not). After all, Miles is about 11 years old and is probably just hitting puberty. He's sent down from school for some reason -- presumably because he's "telling things" to the other boys (which he may have learned from Quint). Really, if any 19th-century story lends itself to a Freudian reading, then it's got to be Turn of the Screw. (Having said that, one of the more interesting recent essays about the story is a post-colonial one that interprets Quint as Irishman and locates the real root of the hauntings in India (where Miles and Flora's parents have died serving the Empire).)

Finally, one last point just occurs to me: In The Innocents, doesn't Kerr actually look at the miniature of Quint before she sees his ghost? If so, then that's a subtle but crucial difference from the story, where her sighting of Quint's ghost precedes her knowledge of the man. (And that would seem to be a key piece of evidence that Clayton's interpretation is indeed that it's in her head -- since she "imagines" Quint only after she's seen an image of him.)

[Sloper]

Lots of interesting points, Tryavna - I agree pretty much with your reading of how the 'young' governess could be suffering from sexual frustration, I suppose my only issue is that she always comes across to me as a somewhat older-seeming woman. But as I said, that may just be because of the point of view from which she tells the story.

Just two other points: I didn't mean to suggest that contemporary readers would have been inclined to be 'sceptical' about the reality of the ghosts, just that James tended to use the supernatural (when he did use it) as a literal manifestation of some 'metaphorical' truth - from what I remember of The Jolly Corner, for instance, the ghost is real, but also represents the protagonist's inner feelings about the 'alternative' life he might have led. So to read the ghosts in Screw as 'literal' and 'real' doesn't make them any less Freudian. It sometimes feels as though there is an implication, in discussions of this story, that taking the ghosts as 'literal' makes it less complex - it's 'just a ghost story'.

But aren't ghost stories (good ones, anyway) always interesting on some deeper level than the literal one? And aren't all ghosts metaphors for something that exists in our own heads, just as all stories about 'the future' are really about the present? Anyway, enough banalities.

As to The Innocents:

doesn't Kerr actually look at the miniature of Quint before she sees his ghost? If so, then that's a subtle but crucial difference from the story, where her sighting of Quint's ghost precedes her knowledge of the man. (And that would seem to be a key piece of evidence that Clayton's interpretation is indeed that it's in her head -- since she "imagines" Quint only after she's seen an image of him.)

The fact that the governess is able to describe the (somewhat peculiar-looking) Peter Quint without having seen him is the big stumbling block to the Freudian reading of the story, and I'm not sure how it could be overcome (does Wilson address this point?) I think they put this detail of the miniature into the film in order to make the Freudian reading possible, but they also put in the teardrop which seems to indicate that Miss Jessel is real, and various other hints. For instance, Frayling argues (in his intro to the BFI dvd) that the governess almost always sees the ghosts before we do, suggesting they might be in her head; but even as he says this, he shows a clip in which Quint clearly appears outside the window behind her before she turns to see him; which of course is a far more effective horror film technique. Also, at the end (sorry for the amateurish spoilerising - how do you do that?):

The governess is not holding Miles in her arms when he dies (in the story you could argue that she smothers him to death), and there is no prior indication that he has a heart problem; plus we see (I think when Miss Giddens is not looking) Peter Quint standing above them, passing his hand over the scene as Miles dies. All of which might be taken to suggest that he dies of supernatural causes, rather than because of what the governess has done to him.

This is what I love about this film: it is aware of the Freudian reading of the story, and presents that as an option for the viewer; but it also works to subvert that reading and keep us in doubt as to the 'truth' (an idea Mrs Grose struggles with in her last scene with Miss Giddens) or otherwise of what we are seeing.

[tryavna]

It sometimes feels as though there is an implication, in discussions of this story, that taking the ghosts as 'literal' makes it less complex - it's 'just a ghost story'.

But aren't ghost stories (good ones, anyway) always interesting on some deeper level than the literal one? And aren't all ghosts metaphors for something that exists in our own heads, just as all stories about 'the future' are really about the present?

Oh, yes, I totally agree with you, Sloper. The fact that we're still able to entertain so many different views on the original story after more than a century is perhaps the clearest evidence of the story's complexity and James' genius. And I guess I should point out that James' original audience -- or at least the first professional reviewers -- appreciated that complexity and placed the story in a tradition of more "serious" horror stories. For instance, the reviewers from the New York Times and the New York Tribune compared the story favorably with Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde and the works of Hawthorne, respectively. So I didn't mean to imply that the earliest readers were unsophisticated because they took the supernatural aspects literally.

The fact that the governess is able to describe the (somewhat peculiar-looking) Peter Quint without having seen him is the big stumbling block to the Freudian reading of the story, and I'm not sure how it could be overcome (does Wilson address this point?)

It was exactly that point for which Wilson was originally lambasted by the critics who disagreed with his argument. Wilson's basic argument is that, since the Uncle is never described in the story, there "must" be enough of a similarity between the Uncle and Quint that their images are more or less interchangeable in the Governess' own mind:

There seems to be only a single circumstance which does not fit into the hypothesis that the ghosts are hallucinations of the governess: the fact that the governess' description of the first ghost at a time when she has never heard of the valet should be identifiable by the housekeeper. But when we look back, we see that even this has been left open to a double interpretation. The governess has never heard of the valet, but it has been suggested to her in a conversation with the housekeeper that there has been some other male somewhere about who "liked every one young and pretty," and the idea of this other person has been ambiguously confused with the master and with the master's interest in her, the present governess. The master has never been described;we have merely been told that he was "handsome." Of the ghost, who is described in detail, we are told that he has "straight, good features," and he is wearing the master's clothes.

[Sloper]

Thanks for the quote from Wilson - seems like a strange argument, given that Quint is actually described (if I remember rightly) as having red hair, and being 'like an actor, though I've never seen one'...