The battle of brains and wits are off and running for nanny Deborah Kerr and her charge, Hayley Mills in this superb thriller based on the play by Enid Bagnold. It was a hit on the stage and equally as compelling on film with Mills complex as the extremely troubled young lady who lives with grandmother Edith Evans and hates the world because of the presumed abandonment of her supposedly loose living mother (Elizabeth Sellars). Mills has had a number of nannies either dismissed or running off for their own sanity, and she meets her match in Kerr who has her own secrets that Mills longs to uncover.
However, in the theory of being careful of what you wish for, Mills comes to regret her scheming, finding Kerr to be her savior, but in nearly destroying her, threatens to destroy her self. In great support are John Mills as the butler who is completely on Kerr's side and Felix Aylmer as a judge who's there to decide Mills future. Every performance is glorious, with Kerr quite different than her previous nanny roles and Evans quite commanding as the domineering grandmother who's a bit dotty in thoughts but not in spirit.
As for Mills, she is as far away from her Disney roles here as she could get, and it's the sign of a good adult actress emerging. Mills, Sellers and Aylmer do excellent work as well, staying in the background but making their limited screen time count. This is one of the few plays that opened up for the big screen and with only a small cast really seems cinematic. That is definitely a reflection of its director, Ronald Neame, and very much unlike anything that Ross Hunter had done previously. The garden may indeed be chalk, but the flowers it grows are metaphorically radiant.
However, in the theory of being careful of what you wish for, Mills comes to regret her scheming, finding Kerr to be her savior, but in nearly destroying her, threatens to destroy her self. In great support are John Mills as the butler who is completely on Kerr's side and Felix Aylmer as a judge who's there to decide Mills future. Every performance is glorious, with Kerr quite different than her previous nanny roles and Evans quite commanding as the domineering grandmother who's a bit dotty in thoughts but not in spirit.
As for Mills, she is as far away from her Disney roles here as she could get, and it's the sign of a good adult actress emerging. Mills, Sellers and Aylmer do excellent work as well, staying in the background but making their limited screen time count. This is one of the few plays that opened up for the big screen and with only a small cast really seems cinematic. That is definitely a reflection of its director, Ronald Neame, and very much unlike anything that Ross Hunter had done previously. The garden may indeed be chalk, but the flowers it grows are metaphorically radiant.