The Children's Hour

Rating:
Summary: A Child's Lie
Review: "The Children's Hour," based on the play by Lillian Hellman, is for anyone who appreciates quality filmmaking. Expertly directed by William Wilder, the film is a multi-layered, richly textured morality tale regarding a simple lie and it's devastating consequences. Considered quite controversial upon it's initial release, the film seems rather tame by today's standards.

As headmistresses of the exclusive Wright-Dobie School for Girls, Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine deliver stand-out performances, acting as teachers, disciplinarians, and den-mothers to a brood of twenty girls under their charge. After Mary (Karen Balkin) a deceitful, lying little bully who is black-mailing one of her fellow classmates, is punished by Karen (Hepburn) and Martha (MacLaine), she takes revenge by twisting an overheard comment between the two women and turns it into a vicious falsehood against her teachers, intimating that the two are lovers. She relates this lie to her overly trusting grandmother (Acadamy Award nominee Fay Bainter) who soon spreads the gossip to the parents of the other girls and to the community at large. The resulting furor threatens the future of the school and ostracizes the two women as outcasts.
Unfortunately, the lie also forces a guilt-ridden Martha to examine her feelings for her friend and confront her own repressed homosexuality, which leads to disasterous results.

Although the homosexual aspect of the story has taken the focus (complete with the gay character being punished for her "perversion".......a norm in films of the time which featured a gay character), the film's core is actually about the utter destruction that can be caused by innuendo and half-truths and the power of the spoken word.

Hepburn and MacLaine are backed up with equally powerful perfomances from Bainter, Miriam Hopkins as Martha's somewhat daffy Aunt Lillian and James Garner as Karen's frustrated but ever loyal fiance. Angela Cartwright (of "Lost In Space" fame) has a smaller role as the kleptomaniac student being blackmailed by Mary. The film is beautifully photographed in black and white which actually enhances the tone of the film. The peaceful and serene country setting of the picture mirrors the opening scenes of happiness, hope and contentment but soon stands in stark contrast to the turmoil which soon takes place within it's idyllic confines.

The DVD version provides excellent picture and sound quality but alas, offers no extras except for a theatrical trailer, thereby excluding it from a full 5-star rating.

Rating:
Summary: The "FINEST" Hour
Review: ...dark, brooding and deeply moving with a cast of stellar performances especially from the always wonderful Fay Bainter and the greatly under rated Miriam Hopkins!

Rating:
Summary: The Childerns Hour
Review: A Great, Great movie always a big fan of Audrey's also Shirley's and James Garner. Being a child of the thirty's I love this kind of a movie. Very bold for it's day.
Thank you

Lloyd McCrary

Rating:
Summary: I really liked this movie
Review: A movie about the how the line between truth and lie can be very thin indeed. Also proves once again that Wiliam Wyler was the great director to ever work in hollywood. There are a number of possible directions were he could have turned movie form a character study to a melodrama and he chose not to take it.

Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: A very good movie! Hepburn does an excellent job of acting in this movie! The stroy is well written for the times, and the ending always makes me cry!

Rating:
Summary: Lukewarm and a bit hokey
Review: As someone who directed the play this movie was based on, I feel qualified to say that this film is lukewarm at best.

Now, the Hellman play had enough dated, corny moments to make any decent director tear her hair out (especially if the said director was slaving away directing for a two-bit, small-town, scuzzy, exploitative, unappreciative, social-climbing, pitiful, political, snotty, piddly community theatre in Alliance, OH which shall remain nameless, but that you can identity by following the rank, desperate, consumed-by-envy smell of the backstabbing, wannabe artist Board of Directors "Director").

So, you would think that the film, being funded and Holywood and all, would streamline the story and cut out all cheesy bits.

However, instead, the film adds bizarre moments that never existed in the film, kicks up the camp, and changes the ending so that the basic narrative is unrecognizable.

I would say, skip this film and read the play yourself. That way you'll be able to see what Hellman was truly trying to convey.

Rating:
Summary: The film that inspired me to write stories.
Review: Between 1989-1991, I'd been watching a great deal of motion pictures filmed between the 1927-1967 on late night television. In 1991, I saw "The Children's Hour" and was so impressed with the archetecture of the plot, the delivery of the lead actresses, subject matter and cinematography, I began to start writing. Ten years later, I've finally purchased the movie to watch it a second time. The impact this time much greater this time due to my own age. There is no way something like this could have produced in this day and age and is something of what I perceived to be a classic. The build up makes the end so powerful, it will leave those who cry over films with a wet face.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Good film with inconsistencies
Review: Children's Hour is a superb black and white film with an outstanding cast, but one can see that there were difficulties with script and direction, and the subsequent struggle in the editing room, which prevent the film from having it's full impact. But what an impact it still has!

Fans of Hepburn, MacLaine, and James Garner will find rich rewards in the performances of these well known actors, and the supporting cast is also excellent, especially Karen Balkin and Rosalie Wells, the young female students at the center of the scandal.

The deceptively named "Children's Hour" neatly camouflages the real story behind the happy schoolhouse, which makes for compelling and surprising drama, to say the least, and unique topical material.

As far as editing is concerned, the numerous jump cuts within scenes either indicated an incompetent editor, or that director William Wyler didn't give himself enough coverage on many scenes. But these difficulties only foreshadowed other structural problems. A MAJOR portion of the drama is missing: the courtroom drama was completely circumvented! And then the doting and melodramatic ending, the loss of love, and the peculiar depression of the characters even in the face of their ultimate victory...I don't buy it. The ending seemed to drag awkwardly on and on, and Martha Dobie's (MacLaine) final act was not justified under the circumstances. If it was justified, her performance didn't convince me that it was.

Above all, the enormous period taboo against homosexuality stretched the ending to what I think we today would agree is an unreasonable and quite excessive conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: Too often and easily dismissed
Review: Coming out in the mid 80's there wasn't nearly as much to choose from when it came to movies that included lesbian characters. One that I had heard mentioned, and almost always dismissively, was The Children's Hour. The reason for that dismissal was the ending, which was required during the time period in which it was written and filmed, where the gay character must end up straight or dead. There was little leeway allowed for anything else released to mainstream America.

But that's not important. The Children's Hour is beautifully filmed in black and white, showcasing to our modern color sensitivities how wonderfully textured such film can be. The acting is top notch from everyone involved, with the performances by Hepburn and McLaine being almost flawless (if a little over the top in the dramatic scene near the end by McLaine). The movie is also a wonderful capture of a distinct period in time that was not so long ago, yet utterly different from current America, where women and girls always wore their gloves and men weren't seen without their jacket and tie.

While parts of the plot and the view of lesbians as unnatural offend modern liberal thinking, it's a dramatic and important demonstration of the fact that IS how most of society viewed such matters. To take offense and not pay attention to the layers and depth of the relationships between the characters is to do the movie a disservice. Too many stick to the surface of Hepburn's character being portrayed as the good straight one and McLaine's as being the pervert and in their outrage overlook the deep love that Hepburn's character has for her longtime best friend.

Of course many also get caught up in the whole lesbian issue, which doesn't really even get expounded upon until the very end, and miss the real gist of the movie which surrounds the powerplays among children and how their unthinking actions and words can spill over and take on a life of their own, destroying people in the process. Children, through their lack of emotional maturity, are not able to see outside of themselves or their immediate selfish wants and needs and this movie is a very dramatic portrayal of that very thing.

If you enjoy good black and white cinema, if you enjoy movies that capture a time period, if you enjoy Hepburn and/or McLaine, if you enjoy a movie that portrays a deep and caring relationship between two women, I suggest not overlooking The Children's Hour.

Rating:
Summary: The Wonderous Shirley McClaine and Audrey Hepburn
Review: First of all, I must say that I loved this movie. Shirley McClaine absolutely broke my heart, and Audrey Hepburn was perfect as always.

It was the kind of movie that I could really get into. What the characters felt, I felt. At the end I thought "Oh my god, how am I going to live after this has happened?" and then I realized, "Oh wait, it was just a movie."

If you are a fan of Shirley McClaine or Audrey Hepburn, if you have ever felt persecuted, if you have ever had hidden desires, or if you just need a good cry, THIS IS THE MOVIE FOR YOU.