What a pleasant surprise! This is a movie I had never heard of until someone who has 95% movie correlation with me recommended it, and it was pretty slammin'. Fact: The cast is fabulous. It featured outstanding performances by two children [weird, right?], and I mean really fantastic. Bonita Granville is pure evil.Also, Joel McCrea is very smug in this, which I like. Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon, the protagonists, did not take any bullshit from anyone. Second fact: William Wyler remade his movie again as the Children's Hour in 1961, and These Three is maybe the better of the two. Third fact: The original story came from a play written by Lillian Hellman [a lady, what]. In the movie, the two protagonists run a school and are accused of both sleeping with the same man, thus scandalizing their students. In the play, however, the two teachers are accused of being lesbians. While this would have made for a tenser and more interesting movie, it just got served by that Haze Code. Obviously the idea of women sleeping with each other would just make audiences barf. I mean, I'm barfing right now.
4/5 pizzas
Weird, I didn't know there was another version of The Children's Hour. I remember liking the Hepburn/McLaine version (they kept the lesbian thing in there). I saw the play a few years ago and it was pretty good too, but had a lot more focus on the students and their little side plots than the movie did. Maybe I shall check out this one some day...
ReplyDeletewatching (and liking!) movies about children? gross.
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