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A review by florapants84
The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman
4.0
About 8 years ago, I had a sort of emotional crisis. I just couldn't deal with the compounded pressures of life, and most especially the breakdown of an intimate relationship, along with the sudden onset of serious illness of a parent. I quit my job, and camped out on my bed for a month watching the AMC and TCM network nonstop. I'm sure you're picturing an unbathed, unshaven me, in weeks old Garfield pajamas, and dirty cereal bowls piled precariously high on one nightstand. I assure you, it was a neater affair, but that's exactly how I felt on the inside. Beaten.
I've always been a film geek, and had a passion for the classics, but during this dark period of my life, film took on a deeper, lifelike meaning for me. Sometimes I felt like I'd literally stepped into another time period, and I took comfort in completely losing myself in a director's imaginary playground. I also fondly remember discovering Wes Anderson for the first time. I love that man!
I'm sitting here, index finger poised over the backspace key, debating about whether to erase this and start over again, on account of the "naked-in-front-of-the-class-dream-sequence-ish" feeling that's come over me. Waiting. Wait-ing. Bravery won out! It's a good day to be alive.
So I've set the scene, and now you know why I was primed to fully appreciate the genius of Hellman's mind! I woke up early one morning during that month, in time to catch a wonderful film called These Three, filmed in 1936, that was based on the play The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman, who also wrote the screenplay. The two main characters, a young pair of best friends, have pooled their resources to run a girls' boarding school in a small town. One mean-spirited student starts a vicious rumor about the teachers, that has unforeseeable consequences. Due to content and the audience at that time, Hellman had to revise a major plot element of her play for the screenplay, in order for it to be accepted by a production studio. Later in 1961, director William Wyler took Hellman's original play and created a poignant, atmospheric film gem, starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley McClaine.
I think what most got to me was that long after you watch these films, or read the play, you will be thinking about it. Although it seems like a pretty simple, straightforward story, it's so complex! Read the play, watch the films, see for yourself. Reading the play for the first time now, I feel this surging protective affection for that scared, beaten person of 8 years ago. Like Karen and Martha in the play, I wish I could tell her that things aren't as bleak as they seem, and that the sun really will come out tomorrow.
I've always been a film geek, and had a passion for the classics, but during this dark period of my life, film took on a deeper, lifelike meaning for me. Sometimes I felt like I'd literally stepped into another time period, and I took comfort in completely losing myself in a director's imaginary playground. I also fondly remember discovering Wes Anderson for the first time. I love that man!
I'm sitting here, index finger poised over the backspace key, debating about whether to erase this and start over again, on account of the "naked-in-front-of-the-class-dream-sequence-ish" feeling that's come over me. Waiting. Wait-ing. Bravery won out! It's a good day to be alive.
So I've set the scene, and now you know why I was primed to fully appreciate the genius of Hellman's mind! I woke up early one morning during that month, in time to catch a wonderful film called These Three, filmed in 1936, that was based on the play The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman, who also wrote the screenplay. The two main characters, a young pair of best friends, have pooled their resources to run a girls' boarding school in a small town. One mean-spirited student starts a vicious rumor about the teachers, that has unforeseeable consequences. Due to content and the audience at that time, Hellman had to revise a major plot element of her play for the screenplay, in order for it to be accepted by a production studio. Later in 1961, director William Wyler took Hellman's original play and created a poignant, atmospheric film gem, starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley McClaine.
I think what most got to me was that long after you watch these films, or read the play, you will be thinking about it. Although it seems like a pretty simple, straightforward story, it's so complex! Read the play, watch the films, see for yourself. Reading the play for the first time now, I feel this surging protective affection for that scared, beaten person of 8 years ago. Like Karen and Martha in the play, I wish I could tell her that things aren't as bleak as they seem, and that the sun really will come out tomorrow.