The Innocents

I happened to see this old movie on YouTube--The Innocents, a 1961 film based, and rather faithfully so, on the Henry James story, The Turn of the Screw. Curiously, I remembered the movie quite well when watching it again, though I was just a child when I first saw it. Moreover, I had the impression, somehow, that I had understood the story better as a child than I did on watching it last night. I can't really say what I understood about it. I can only remember that I had no questions about it at the time, while now, as an old man, I can only wonder what the hell this story was about. I recall a professor in college saying that The Turn of the Screw is a story in which nothing happens, and then going on to explain what a wonderful job James had done at saying nothing. A dubious sort of accomplishment at best. But of course it's not about nothing--for there is something there that made a lasting impression on me those many years ago--perhaps in the same way that the children in the story may have better understood what was happening than the governess from whose viewpoint the story is told. (Interesting to note, by the way, that the screen play was written by Truman Capote).