In Conversations with Capote, conducted by Lawrence Grobel, the author recalled his involvement on The Innocents: "When it was offered to me to do it as a film, I said yes instantly, without rereading it.Then I let several weeks go by before I reread it and then I got the shock of my life. Are they conduits for the evil spirits or truly innocent? Miss Giddens' obsession with discovering the truth brings a feverish intensity to the proceedings which is almost as chilling as the phantoms she seeks to exorcise. Yet a sense of mystery and ambivalence still exists regarding the children. In The Innocents, there is never any doubt that Bly House is haunted - you see the ghosts. The beauty of The Turn of the Screw is that you are never sure whether Miss Giddens is imaging the supernatural occurrences or whether they are actually happening. The story of a governess, Miss Giddens, who is entrusted with the care of two small children, Flora and Miles, by their uncle at a remote country estate, James' novella creates a mood of dread and menace through the increasing anxiety of Miss Giddens who suspects that the children may be influenced and corrupted by the malevolent spirits of the deceased former governess, Miss Jessel, and caretaker Peter Quint of Bly House. The screenplay by Truman Capote was actually based on the 1950 stage adaptation by William Archibald and may be one reason Henry James purists find fault with the 1961 film version. Among the many film versions, however, most agree that The Innocents (1961), directed by Jack Clayton, is the most elegant, evocative and frightening of them all. One of the great ghost stories in world literature, Henry James' 1898 novella, The Turn of the Screw, has been adapted countless times for the stage, television, cinema and even as a ballet, an opera (by Benjamin Britten in 1954) and a graphic novel (by Guido Crepax in 1989). Shattered, she takes the dead child in her arms and kisses him. The child finally screams "Quint," and then falls lifeless to the ground. When she sees the face of Quint in the garden, Miss Giddens demands that Miles say the name of the man she is confident they both can see. Consoling herself with the thought that she has saved little Flora's soul, Miss Giddens embarks upon saving Miles. Grose takes the child away from Bly House. The employment of shock treatment for Flora only results in an hysterical outburst, and Mrs. Convinced that Flora and Miles also see the haunting visions, Miss Giddens attempts to make them admit it. She then realizes, or thinks she realizes, that they have returned to take possession of the children's souls. Furthermore, she learns that the two "intangibles" not only had licentious relations with each other but in some horrible way perverted the children. When she describes the two people to the housekeeper, Miss Giddens is horrified to hear that she has identified a former manager, Quint, and a governess, Miss Jessel, both now deceased. As the days pass, Miss Giddens discovers that "others" are prowling about the estate-first a man, then a woman. But when Miss Giddens meets the apparently angelic, well-mannered little boy, her anxiety disappears. The first ominous indication that all is not as it seems is a letter from Miles' school explaining that he is being expelled for attempting to corrupt his fellow students. She is greeted by Flora, a seemingly adorable child, and Mrs. Miss Giddens, a minister's daughter, is engaged in London by the master of Bly House as governess for his niece, Flora, and his nephew, Miles.
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