As the blurry medium close-up shot of Miss Giddens comes into focus, the off-screen man asked her, “Do you have an imagination?” to which the applying governess responded affirmatively. A rather vague question where the semantics of the word could either pertain to aspirations, desires, or, for this analysis, the resourcefulness of the mind to conjure up things.
The Uncle—a wealthy bachelor—hires a neophyte governess to look out for his two orphaned relatives residing in a mansion the governess later imagined to be haunted. Based on the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by writer Henry James, The Innocents (1961) is a psychological horror directed and produced by Jack Clayton under 20th Century Fox. It stars Deborah Kerr who played the governess; child actors Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin took the part of the orphans, Miles and Flora, respectively; and the Uncle played by Michael Redgrave.
The benevolent narrative structure of the film shows a direct causality of events from beginning to end. Whereas, the emphasis on the lamented tragedy that happened to Miss Jessel and Peter Quint—the previous governess and her valet partner, respectively—provided an essential context; though it was merely recalled through dialogue and trauma. The curious case of their deaths accounts for the raison d'etre of Miss Giddens that primarily drives the story.
Semantically, the film is categorized in the horror genre. However, while it includes the basic elements that constitute the genre, instead of relying heavily on the thrill of explicit graphic horrors, The Innocents played with the cognitive experience of the audience. Thus, to put it more accurately, it is a psychological horror with subtle syntactic manifestations of sexual repression (although I will not discuss this here). This is grounded on restraint which is at the core of my analysis.
The story started with an ambiguous shot of a whimpering woman in a pitch black atmosphere as the credits flashes on the right half of the frame—nay! I would argue that the film started at least forty seconds prior to this opening credits where we only see nothingness—a blackened still image accompanied by the gentle a cappella of a young girl singing O Willow Waly in the background, filling the blankness of the static frame. Failure to acknowledge this as such misses the very strategy of the film to establish its aesthetics, which is of restraint.
Using film studies terminology, we can relate restraint to the concept of de-emphasis and ellipsis. Simply, restraint refers to a motivated omission or concealment of visual or aural elements that serve a practical utility and most importantly, trigger a psychological activity in the audience.
In the case of the film’s opening shot, we are provided only with a sound and left to make sense with the lacking visuals. I understand that one may disregard the shot as an actual part of the plot because, at first, it seems to have no particular relevance to the narrative. But we know that’s not entirely true. We learn subsequently in the film that the disembodied voice belonged to one of the orphans, and the song is a motivic device whose lyrics accentuates the story’s theme of affection. This case furthers our understanding of restraint. That is, the deliberate absence of certain audio-visual elements does not mean absolute lack of detail; the restraint per se is an information conditional to our interpretation.
About Miss Giddens, it was immediately mentioned in his interview with the Uncle that she’s a daughter of a country parson. We also learned from a brief conversation she had with the children that she grew up in a house a lot smaller than Bly where secrets are difficult to keep. These details, albeit limited, are nonetheless sufficient to explain the internal conflict of Miss Giddens.
The governess’ profound affection for the children was continuously challenged throughout the film. The first occasion was upon learning of the intriguing death of Miss Jessel. The other instances came immediately upon her arrival at Bly. Ultimately, these odd occurrences aggravated Miss Giddens’ paranoia, corrupting her of the essence of the testament she wrote in her application letter: “More than anything, I love children.” Building on that, her paranoia is what accounts for the employment of restraint. In other words, the implications of restraint signify the gradual disintegration of the focal character’s psyche, and in whole, the film’s genre.
The mystery of the film lies heavily on its spoken dialogue. Though in scenes where the characters engage in conversation, an over-the-shoulder shot is rarely, if not never, utilized. Rather, the composition provokes the tension emanating from the conversation by prioritizing the proximity between the characters as well as their visual relationship with their environs. This technique is best exemplified in the scenes of the governess and the housekeeper.
In the still image above, the two shot of Miss Giddens and Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins) omit the implication of suggestive perspective that, otherwise, is inherent in an over-the-shoulder shot. Additionally, the standard lens allows for a deep focus to function; thus, on one hand, preventing the characters from being detached from their surroundings. On the other hand, since the sharpness of the image restricts the enforcement of isolated emphasis (or perspective), the audience is therefore made active to observe the nuances of the actors’ performance while being also attentive to the background.
This inclination to surveil not only the background but the presented mise en scène is further enforced by the camera movement and editing. When Miss Giddens first enters the mansion’s living room, the camera smoothly follows her as she walks around the room. The continuous shot allows an uninterrupted experience of the mansion’s immense space. When Miss Giddens stopped beside the piano to remove her gloves and hat, the camera ceased to move as well. This momentary static shot captures a composition where at the center of Miss Giddens and Mrs. Grose is a third figure visible from outside the window. Because of the restraint to use a depth of field that would favor one plane to the other, the deep focus removes the preferential emphasis on the elements on the foreground to the background. With the aid of the deep depth of field, the features of the figure became more apparent that otherwise would just be a bokeh.
The figure, by the way, is a sculpture which is a significant component of the film’s production design. The scene above is one of the other instances where the immobile sculptures trigger an impulse to mistake them for ghosts. The glass windows, in this case, are a prerequisite to hint their onscreen presence in the first place.
Additionally, the transparency of the windows as well as the open doorways and long hallways extend our curiosity beyond the bounded space of the indoors. This builds an anxious expectation that something may appear behind the windows, by the doorways, or at the end of the hallways. In part, this is a plausible explanation for Miss Giddens’ seeing the ghost of Peter Quint as in the shot where Quint’s emergence from behind the porch’s window is superimposed with the sculpture. Another example would be during the final scene when Miss Giddens is forcing Miles to look at Quint standing among the sculptures. But a succeeding juxtaposition of two frames reveals that it was a mere sculpture all along.
Furthermore, lighting is a crucial visual code to set the eerie atmosphere of the film, particularly inside the house. The chiaroscuro paints a high contrast between harsh highlights and deep shadows. In a particular scene where Miss Giddens and Miles were alone in the fireplace room, the high-key lighting casts a deep shadow of Miles as he enters the room. The shadow is so profound that, from the perspective of Miss Giddens, indicates Quint’s embodied presence in the room.
Imitative of the human eye, the cinematography makes the proximity of the characters to the camera, as well as depth of field, more natural as it would have been in real life. In other words, we, the viewers, take the position of the camera thereby making us part of the scene, and with it, the tension, confusion, and paranoia—all of which are furthered by the restraint in sound.
Upon Miss Giddens’ arrival at Bly manor, we hear a woman’s voice calling Flora. The governess pointed it out to Flora but the young girl denied she heard anything. Thus far, the voice is insignificant. That is, the “mystery” behind it is yet to be established until Miss Giddens assumed it was Mrs. Grose who called Flora’s name. But the housekeeper, too, denied it was her. Now that the source of the voice is still unclarified, it now becomes enigmatic. It now holds a place in the film’s narrative.
Restraint here operated how the incorporeal voice was not investigated significantly for us to learn its true nature. In other words, the emphasis on it was limited yet effective for its impression became imprinted in our consciousness which ultimately shapes our experience with the film’s sound.
Moreover, the nature of the voice in relation to the diegesis and our perception is put into question—a consequence that builds the ambiguity of the film and further suggests the growing paranoia of Miss Giddens. Other prominent examples of this are the off-screen shrieking of animals at night. The restraint to display a visual representation for these sounds heightens their sinister inference and at the same time interrogates their true existence in the first place.