The Innocents

(Jack Clayton, UK 1961, 100 min., DCP)

A disturbing exercise in psychological horror, as told from the point of view of a repressed English governess (Deborah Kerr) whose young charges may or may not be possessed by sinister spirits inhabiting their stately country home. The nuanced screenplay, by Truman Capote and William Archibald, was adapated from Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. After 20th Century-Fox insisted that director Jack Clayton shoot in Cinemascope, he and cinematographer Freddie Francis came up with ingenious framings that alternately use the edges of the screen for darkness and to place figures just at the edge of vision, creating a sense of the haunted aspect of Bly House.