For those hording toilet paper

On my mind during two scenes in The Innocents (1961) involving Ms Jessel and Peter Quint, was how they would have been posited to the audiences of Insidious and The Conjuring, among countless ghost story / possession pictures of today. Strike the violins and pop the jump scare cues, really provoking responses instead of letting the images work their own magic. I haven’t watched The Innocents in several years, so the timing seemed just right tonight. I enjoy the duel of theories regarding whether or not Kerr was mentally unstable or actually did see Quint and Jessel. There was a good point that no one seems to see them but Kerr, and that while under the care of Miss Groce (Megs Jenkins), young Flora (Pamela Franklin) was seemingly happy and without a care in the world. Perhaps they were just kids having endured the trauma of losing the young governess and hired hand who wish to repress their finding them both dead…and the possible corrupting influence of both on them due to no parental influence available. Groce does say that perhaps the kids leaving the memories buried could be best for them while Kerr’s new governess, Miss Giddens, encouraging them to recall it all might be unwise. We do see that after Giddens reinforces that both kids, Flora and Miles (Martin Stephens; Village of the Damned (1960)) say the names of Jessel and Quint, only bad results follow. So, despite her best intentions, Giddens seems to do more harm than good. Is her reasoning that Jessel and Quint want to possess the children so they can be together (offering an unsettling incestuous scenario) the true plans of these ghosts? Are there even ghosts? Or is this all drummed up by a woman wrought with her own paranoid delusions? Did she get swept up in the histories of Jessel and Quint, told cautiously, with reluctance, by Groce? I dig the film’s unwillingness to give you absolutes. I can’t honestly offer the right words to even describe Francis’ cinematography or the expanse scope of the enviorment covered by the camera in every scene. Just a piece of superb craftsmanship.