Day 13 - The Innocents (1961)

For today I chose to make a selection from Guillermo Del Toro's list of his five favorite ghost films, which he discuses in a video here. It's easy to see why Del Toro would be such a fan of The Innocents, with its story of malignant spirits, its use of children, and its eerie, gothic style. As both a horror fan and an English major I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I've never read Henry James' The Turn of the Screw on which this movie is based. Having seen this film, The Turn of the Screw will definitely be on my October reading list, and if James' novel is even remotely similar to this film's portrayal, then it'll be great.

The Innocents tells the story of a governess, Miss Giddens, who is hired by a wealthy gentleman to take care of his niece and nephew over whom he is guardian. On moving into the great, gothic mansion where the children live, Miss Giddens soon discovers that there are a number of secrets and mysteries in the old house, some of which have not yet been laid to rest. As dark figures begin to appear and circumstance become even darker the governess begins to descend into fervor and madness until the nature of the haunting is no longer certain.

Perhaps the most interesting element of this film for me was its two-sidedness, so that, come the end of the movie, the audience is no longer sure if anything supernatural has happened at all or if the whole ordeal has been one vast figment of the governess' imagination. But whether or not you take this as a ghost story or a psychological thriller, there in no denying the haunting quality of the film. From the very opening sequence, in which a child's voice is heard singing in the darkness, there is an intensity underlying the breadth of the film, lashing out at certain moments with an unnerving subtlety.

This is one of those classics that I had never really heard of until I stumbled on to the list of Del Toro's favorite ghost movies, but The Innocents has now become one of those films which I'll be watching over and over in the future. There's something special about these old black and white horror films, something about that absence of color that just seems to add to the eeriness and unreality, or in the way that those classic camera techniques seem to draw you in and put you on edge. Show me The Innocents over The Ring any day.