William Wyler's 1961 film The Children's hour follows two young female teachers who face a life-changing problem when one of their students gets a little upset for (seemingly) no reason. Teachers Karen Wright and Martha Dobie run the "Wright and Dobie School", an all girls Boarding school the two have built from the ground up. One of their students, Mary Tilford, thinks the teachers have it out for her, as she is constantly getting disciplined and in trouble. Mary frequently asks to speak with her grandmother, and one day while with her grandmother, she recalls a time that a classmate told her she saw Martha and Karen doing something she found suspicious, and Mary, seeking a way to get back at her teachers, turns this information into a lie, claiming her teachers are having sexual relations. "The overarching theme of 1961’s The Children’s Hour is that kids are the fucking worst." - Les Fabian Brathwaite, indiewire.com I couldn't agree more with the quote above by the author of the article "hay'sd: Decoding the Classics: 'The Children's Hour'". Throughout this film, I couldn't help but write mean things about the annoying, dramatic, and manipulative Mary Tilford Honestly, I wrote "asshole little girl" on my notes at least 10 times. I know, she's a little girl who clearly wants attention, but the ways she achieves this are what drove me nuts. I think I was more upset about the fact that she dragged her classmates into this and manipulated them into obeying her so this lie could work than being mad about the lie she told. In the same article, Brathwaite writes, "To depict homosexuality, or “sexual perversion”, however, one had to cast it in the most unsympathetic and unflattering light possible." I think this is especially true with Mary, because although this is a fabrication she's started, she shares the same feelings and views (as much as a little girl can) that her grandmother and the general society has, they think Karen and Martha's behavior is unflattering and unworthy of their sympathy in this situation. Something I found interesting that I compared to an earlier film is Martha's Suicide scene. The Children's hour was released in 1961, a time when censorship laws were much different from how they are now, and that can be anything from the way homosexuality is portrayed and responded to in this film, but also the suicide scene. We as an audience don't see much, if you didn't already suspect one of the two women would kill themselves, Karen's dramatic and almost slow-motion running into the school gave you a big hint, as well as her range of facial expressions, along with the shift of music. Karen beats at the door that just won't open in time to save Martha, and we see the shadow of her legs against the wall behind Karen, and the chair lies nearby in the scene as Karen is on the floor crying. When we put two and two together, we realize Martha committed suicide without having to actually see it. The scenes in The Virgin Suicides However, show the viewers a bit more to help them realize what has happened, bringing the story full circle. Cecelia's suicide attempt and death were both graphic compared to Martha's death, but there's also a 38 year difference between them. Clearly, censorship laws changed since 1961 to 1999 when The virgin suicides was released. Not to call myself a connoisseur of suicide scenes (which is extremely depressing - not my intention) but I've seen multiple suicide scenes in films and tv shows. One that's extremely popular right now is Hannah Baker's suicide scene in the Netflix tv Show Thirteen reasons why, which was released about a month ago. Her suicide scenes is extremely graphic, to the point where the specific episode has a warning before starting the episode. We see from start to finish what happens as Hannah kills herself. Another film I could compare this to is one of my favorite films, directed by Murali K. Thalluri in 2006 called 2:37. This film follows a group of high school students around and traces their connections to each other, all minus one girl that you don't see much during the film, who kills herself at the end of the movie. Her suicide scene is also very graphic, so it leads me to believe that there weren't many censorship changes in relation to death or suicide portrayals from 1999 to 2006 to 2017. There are other films aside from the two I've mentioned, some that you may know of are Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996), Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted (1999), and others I'm sure I'm forgetting. I had never thought about the role of film censorship in any films, especially films that featured controversial topics like homosexuality and suicide like in The Children's Hour, but It's neat to be able to take that into consideration while watching other films, or thinking about ones I've already seen, like the 4 movies I mentioned.
1 Comment
Maharshee Patel
5/8/2017 02:57:37 pm
I completely agree with you this movie was very ahead of its time because of the many situations that are brought to light during the film. On one had you have someone coming out and on the other you have a suicide. These were two very horrendous topics in the 60's and especially in the 30's when the play debuted. This was definitely a well constructed play that tastefully depicted the issues that were at hand.
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