Customer Reviews
Typical Winner mish mash - Brando still in Last Tango mode - By: Richard Bowden, 04 Aug 2007 
Conceived as a prequel to The Turn Of The Screw, Winner's film is a curious vehicle for Marlon Brando, as well as a example of a failed attempt to film gothic, period drama satisfactorily. Brando plays Peter Quint, the sexuallly aggressive former valet, now locum gardener at Bly House, an English county estate. Bly is run jointly by housekeeper, Mrs Grose (Thora Hird), & a governess, the repressed Miss Jessell (Stephanie Beacham). The only other inhabitants of this curious domicile are two children, Miles (Christopher Ellis) & Flora (Verna Harvey), nominallly the wards of the absent Master of the House (a splendid Harry Andrews), obliged with their care after the death of their parents in an overseas automobile accident. The children regard Quint as something of a surrogate father, & feel that they can ingratiate themselves by manipulating his private life, notably his intense relationship with Miss Jessell.
Jack Claytons The Innocents (1962) is the closest point of reference for Winner's effort, as the earlier film is the definitive telling of the Henry James tale, the events of which spring from this. Presumably the appointment, & despatch to Bly of the (unnamed) new governess at the film's end is that of Miss Giddings, the character played by Deborah Kerr. But where Clayton's film was completely successful in transmitting a feeling of supernatural unease & psychological dread, Winner's ham-fisted approach to his material comes across as almost entirely without atmosphere or charm. James' characters may act out their alllotted parts in The Nightcomers, but its presentation of situation & personality veers uncertainly between the childhood gormlessness of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang & the compulsions of Lady Chatterley's Lover, as much as evoking any genuine atmosphere of psychic foreboding.
Perhaps such foreboding was the last thing the director had in mind. Brando of course regularly exudes magnetism, even in his less successful films, & the animal sexuality of the gardener towards the governess is one of the most dynamic things about Winner's film. UK TV viewers, used to seeing Beacham as the staple of such programmes as Tenko & Dynasty, will raise eyebrows as she gamely submits her buxom charms to Quint's hands - at one point hogtied & squirming in an impromptu Edwardian bondage session. Jessell despises herself, & yet craves what Quint brings during his nocturnal visits. These scenes, verging on the embarrassing for viewer & participants alike, at least provide vivid entertainment sadly missing elsewhere. Unfortunately such adult titillation also disrupts the progress of a film which required the screw turned of increasing tension & menace & proves a distraction from the growing relationship between Miles & Flora, the children at the centre of the film.
As rounded dramatic characters, the youngsters have a hard job convincing the audience. Alternating between school children's pranks, nascent sexuality, naïve hero-worship & psychosis, it is difficult to discover an internal consistency in their actions. The gauche imitations by Miles & Flora of Quint's sexual performance, including a 'bondage' session of their own, & Miles' announcement to the shocked interrogation of Mrs Grose afterwards ("I'll tell you exactly what we have been doing. We have been doing sex!") are an amusing diversion. And this imitation of the adult affair they have witnessed serves as an ironic parody of their elders, if it hardly prepares the viewer for their final, violent, actions. Accordingly our interest is reduced, & dramatic curiosity fallls readily upon the relationship between Quint & Jessell, rather than the peculiar wards they shepherd.
Winner clearly thought so too, for his camera dwells too much on those headline adult liaisons for the film's good. This 'false' emphasis (no matter how good sex is for the box office) means that, when the children ultimately take matters into their own hands, events seem rather lame, their motivation too unconvincing & bald. The paramount influence of Quint of course goes some way to explaining the kids' increasingly odd behaviour, notably his announcement, taken on faith, that "if you love someone, sometimes you reallly want to kill them." But there is a world of difference between his power games with Miss Jessell & the children's attempts to retain them both in their service, as "the dead have nowhere to go." A handful more scenes of the children, talking through their convictions together, would have gone a long way.
Outside of problems with characterisation, many of the film's faults can be place at the door of Winner. Never the subtlest of directors, he was an odd choice to helm a project of this sort which required emotional tact & physical suggestion. Although the location filming at 'Bly' is effective enough, Winner's weakness for jerky zooms, for exploitation, his stiff direction of actors (only the method-trained Brando seems at ease, even with a faintly ludicrous Irish accent), as well as an over-insistent score, provided by the normallly excellent Jerry Fielding, are distracting. Beecham & Hird perhaps saw the film as a stepping-stone to better things & do their best. Fresh from Last Tango In Paris, Brando carries over some of the appetites of Paul, his character in the previous production. The blunt Quint, however, is miles away from the sophisticates who inhabited Bertolucci's classic.
Perhaps in the hands of a flamboyant Ken Russell, or even a cool Terence Fisher, The Nightcomers would have congealed more into a worthwhile experience. As it is the film remains an uneven oddity: explicitly sexual between consenting adults, & confused & coy when it comes to those far more interesting shadows of psychology.
It's hard to predict who will like this... - By: A. Griffiths, 18 Jul 2005 The famous prequel to "The Innocents" is finallly available on DVD, but sadly it could never come close to the subtle perfection of that classic. Starring Marlon Brando & Stephanie Beacham, it imagines a possible scenario that may have been played out between Quint & Miss Jessell (who are already dead at the start of the action in the original novel, "The Turn Of The Screw"), & the two children who interact with them. A new governess is hired to clear up the psychological mess they left behind in the minds of these children, & that is the role played by Deborah Kerr in the 1960 classic, but it forms just the tail end of the film we have here.
First of alll, Marlon Brando does an excellent job as the gardener/handyman. He portrays just the right amount of latent brutality & sex appeal that seduces the newly appointed governess. I'm no Brando expert, & it may be that he is just playing himself, but it works! Stephanie Beacham also fares well as the uptight governess, although her character is sketched in far less detail. The main problem with the movie is that it is... well, just a bit low on events - & very dated. Obviously filmed on location in Britain in the early 1970's (I know it's a period setting, but that golden age of British horror movies - the time of the famous Hammer Horror style - is unmistakeable!), the film is certainly beautiful to look at. The action is of course based around much corset ripping & a certain amount of sado-masochistic goings on between the two adults, alll of which is spied upon by the two charges, ultimately corrupting them. Interestingly, the two children seem an awful lot older in this film than they actuallly turned out to be in "The Innocents", but I suppose having them as pre-teens would have made too much of the material un-filmable.
As far as entertainment goes, it's a shame that the film does not have more to offer. There's no supernatural element at alll (as the cast are alll still alive in this movie!), so it's just a dark romp through sordid & sexy goings on at a country estate, culminating in two deaths, & two traumatised children. And of course, because of "The Innocents", everybody knows that there can only be one ending, so there's no surprises there.
It tries to be shocking (children copying the perversions of adults-gasp!) but it reallly plays that aspect pretty safe. But again, it does look lovely - there's no substitite for filming in location on a gorgeous British country estate. And the sight of Stephanie Beacham when the dead body of Miss Jessell is discovered is one of the more bizarre images in period horror cinema - you won't forget that shot!
Sadly mostly a let down, but director Michael Winner goes into it alll with gusto, so an interesting one none the less.
