Wyler moves the film beyond the scope of the play by making the struggle between March and Bogart a battle of authority figures who are mentors to their children (in the film, Hal is Glenn's surrogate child). Hal rejects Glenn at the end, leaving the Hilliards’ house and vowing to strike out on his own. But during his time in the house, Hal has been affected by the loving attachment among the family members, and he has even fallen for the older daughter, Cindy. He recognizes that although Glenn helped him escape their father, the life Glenn has provided cannot replace the family life he was deprived of—one of the key ingredients being the female presence that is so clearly lacking in the Griffin brothers’ lives. Hal comes to regret his life of crime, but once he is away from the Hilliards, he reverts to his old ways, stealing a car, and soon he is killed.
At the end of the film, the tables are turned, and Hilliard has the gun. When he threatens Glenn and orders him out of the house, the criminal tells him, “You ain't got it in you,” to which Hilliard replies, “I've got in me. You put it there!” What has the suburban American patriarch found within himself? Is it a capacity for brutality, for evil? Has he discovered what Young Charlie learns from her uncle in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, another parable of a sleepy suburb invaded by evil? Wyler's film, like Hitchcock's, removes the veil of innocence from postwar America's view of itself, suggesting, through the doubling of the two older actors, that we have been harboring “it” all along.
Wyler accentuates the connection between the men in the staging of the final sequence. As Hilliard reenters his home, he and Griffin face each other in profile in a two-shot. Later, in Ralphie's room, when Griffin is holding the boy at gunpoint, Wyler shoots them in a shot–reverse shot, accentuating the distance between them. March's face reflects a rediscovered strength that is somewhat undercut by Wyler's filming him in shadow, while Bogart's reveals a weariness that is accentuated by the stubble on his face. After the “You ain't got it in you” exchange, Wyler significantly amends the end of the play. Holding the gun, Hilliard informs Griffin that his brother is dead, shot full of police bullets, adding, “You put them there.” Then they square off as father figures—one who has just saved his son, the other culpable in the death of his own—as Wyler returns to a shot, uniting them for a moment in the same frame.
This moment is not in the play. There, when Hilliard slaps Griffin and orders him to “Get out of my house,” the gangster reverts to childish whining, as if he is speaking to his father: “You hit me for the last goddamn time…. You ain't ever gonna hit Hal again…. You can sit here ’n’ rot in your stinkin’ house.” He is still yelling as he runs out of the house: “You ain't gonna beat it into Hal and me. Hal ’n’ me's gonna be right on top!” He is shot down by a police officer and dies. In the play, Hayes thus has his gangster figure reenact a scene out of White Heat, shot down in a blaze of glory.
Wyler's closing scene, in contrast, avoids such mock heroism. In a Wyleresque gesture, Hilliard does not slap Griffin but pushes him down the stairs. The film's Glenn Griffin then exits the Hilliard home with his hands up. But when he sees a light shining in his face, he throws his empty gun at it and, in a moment that combines resignation and bravado, is shot down in a volley of machine-gun fire. Wyler's Griffin is weary, but still proud. The excessive machine-gun fire is a testament to his audacity, but it seems a bit much for a man who has nothing left.
Wyler's coda also differs from the play, which ends with the FBI agent Carson praising the Hilliards as a counterpoint to Bard's “disgust with the human race.” Wyler's ending is mostly devoid of dialogue, as the camera focuses first on photographers taking shots of the dead Griffin and then on Eleanor Hilliard, who watches from across the neighbor's lawn until she sees her husband exit the house. Wyler unites them in a long shot and then, in a scene reminiscent of the reunion of Fredric March and Myrna Loy in Best Years, she runs toward him. Here, the couple falls short of an embrace, but the children then run to their father—first Ralphie, then Cindy. The film concludes with the family walking arm in arm into their ravaged, bullet-riddled home. Wyler chooses not to sing the praises of the family's heroism, though he celebrates their decency and integrity. The restrained ending indicates that the Hilliard family may be intact and resilient, but their encounter with the “enemy” has clearly changed them. Wyler is warning that, like the Hilliards, America must turn outward; it must face the world and engage with it. We isolate ourselves at our peril, he seems to say.
The film was not as successful as Wyler or the studio had hoped. Whereas the play won a Tony Award for Best Play, the film did not resonate with either the public or the critics. Although it did return its investment, it was not the smash hit the studio had clearly wished for and predicted. Wyler blamed the lukewarm reaction on “not enough violence.” He went on, “I tried to make it on a more intellectual level, and the picture was a disappointment. The people want violence. To try to eliminate that is absolutely ridiculous.”48 Wyler is more specific in his production notes, which outline his aims but also contain the seeds of the film's undoing: “The audience wishes to see—longs to see—the hero or heroine accomplish certain ends. The villains are very clearly defined. They're bad, and the audience wishes to see them get their comeuppance. Everything is based on a single threat to sympathetic people.” This bare analysis explains the basic, emotional thrust of the material, but Wyler actually aimed higher, seeking to create some uncertainty in the audience: “Any ambivalence creates tension, almost unbearable tension.”49 This extra layer of heightened tension was the “Wyler touch”—which separated the film from the novel and the play yet undoubtedly contributed to its disappointing performance at the box office, because it complicated the film's portrayal of good and evil.
In casting Bogart and thus making Glenn an older man who cares deeply for his brother, and in having Hal learn that his life has been ruined by a series of bad choices, Wyler creates some sympathy for the villains. And just as his Griffin gang is not “clearly defined,” Wyler's Hilliards are not entirely likable, either. Michael Anderegg perceptively observes that the Hilliards have “few of the saving graces” of the Minivers.50 No doubt affected by his own precarious political situation, Wyler chastens the Hilliards for their smug self-righteousness and complacent attitudes. If such even-handedness left the audiences of 1955 uncomfortable, Wyler's less than enthusiastic attitude toward the American nuclear family and his evident sympathy for the underdog make the film more interesting today.
The film also failed to resonate because, despite Vista-Vision, it looked too much like a television show. This result was truly ironic, for Wyler's intention was to critique the stereotypical treatment of the American family that was characteristic of 1950s television. By going outside the home too often, Wyler also failed to exploit, as he did so well in Detective Story and The Heiress, the spatial restrictions of the home that could have made it seem more of a trap. The long takes that served him so well in adaptations such as The Little Foxes were not the best visual strategy to exploit “the unbearable tension” he wanted to create. Instead, those extended perspectives merely dissipated the film's emotional energy.
Wyler started out the 1960s with the blacklist still on his mind. At a National Press Club luncheon for Ben-Hur, he denied there was ever a communist infiltration of Hollywood, condemned blacklisting policies, and asserted his intention to hire writers without regard to their politics. To illustrate the absurdity of the blacklist, he mentioned that Ian McLellan Hunter had been blacklisted as a communist, yet his original story for Roman Holiday was a monarchical fairy tale: “Royalists everywhere loved it.”51
Wyler made three big-budget color films—Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country, and Ben-Hur—before remaking The Children's Hour (1961), his last black-and-white film and a work that belongs with the HUAC inspired group considered here. He claimed to be unhappy with These Three, his first try at Hellman's play and his first film for Goldwyn. Wyler told Curtis Hanson, “I had been dissatisfied wi
th ‘These Three’; it was not the picture I intended…. It was emasculated. On the stage it was a tragedy.”52 So he decided to remake The Children's Hour and remain faithful to Hellman's original text. The result, as he later told Charles Higham, was “a disaster.” This time, he “had adhered too closely to the original play, which had dated badly.”53
Ironically, as Wyler pointed out, the play's central point was integral to both versions: “I saw the story as a tragedy about the power of a lie—in this case the lie that one of the students spread about two of her teachers. I thought the film a serious study of the evil that a lie can wreak in people's lives.”54 It was for this very reason that Hellman felt she had not damaged her 1936 adaptation by shifting the emphasis from lesbianism to a love triangle. The remake's connection to the Hollywood blacklist gave the newer film a certain resonance, but interestingly, the earlier version was superior, despite the interference of the censors.
In announcing his intention to remake Hellman's play, Wyler sidestepped the issue of lesbianism. He claimed that the story's subject was a moral one and not essentially about lesbianism, which he said did not interest him. (If so, one wonders why he chose to revisit the play.) He went on to say, “We haven't attempted to make a dirty film. We plan to do everything possible to keep [children] away, even to telling them: We don't want your money if you're under sixteen.” Producer Walter Mirisch told the press that he was working to get the Production Code revised. Hellman, of course, had never used the word lesbian in her play, and in spite of all the posturing, it was not used in the film either.55
Once Wyler had settled on the idea of remaking The Children's Hour, he contacted Hellman about writing the screenplay. He informed her that he had no deal as yet but hoped to start filming in 1961. Hellman was thrilled at the prospect of working for Wyler again, but when she did not hear from him for two or three months, she accepted a teaching position at Harvard. (After her appearance before the HUAC in 1952, Hellman had been forced to sell her farm, and she needed to work.) Wyler, in the meantime, had persuaded Mirisch to buy the rights from Samuel Goldwyn, and Mirisch had taken out a ten-year lease on the property for $350,000. Learning that Hellman was now committed to Harvard, Wyler implored her to write a draft before starting her teaching assignment, but this proved impossible, as she was going to London for a revival of one of her other plays.
Wyler ultimately persuaded Hellman to work on an outline while sailing to London on the Queen Elizabeth in October. (Hellman wanted to introduce Wyler to Peter Schaffer—a young playwright who would later write Equus and Amadeus—whom she recommended as a screenwriter, but his schedule conflicted with Wyler's.) Once Hellman returned to New York, Mirisch drew up a contract, agreeing to pay her $50,000 to write the screenplay. But the producer was not satisfied with the outline she submitted some months later, and he became concerned about Hellman's working only part-time on the script while teaching at Harvard. He insisted that Wyler send the outline to someone else, and the director decided on Ernest Lehman and John Michael Hayes, both of whom had had recent successes with Hitchcock (Lehman with North by Northwest; Hayes with Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, and The Man Who Knew Too Much). After reading Hellman's outline, Lehman passed, but Hayes accepted and was hired.
Wyler was not pleased with the draft Hayes submitted in April—he had changed the title to “The Infamous” (later pared down to “Infamous”)—and the director sent it to Hellman for suggestions. She found it “mostly workable” but, interestingly, did not consider it very good “because it borrowed too literally and not always too wisely from the original play.” She also felt that everybody in Hayes's version “talks too much.”56 She mailed Wyler some revisions from her home on Martha's Vineyard but declared that an extensive rewrite was necessary, and she could not do that herself unless production was delayed, which was impossible.
Wyler had already cast the principals. Audrey Hepburn had accepted the role of Karen even before Wyler had a screenplay. Shirley MacLaine was cast as Martha, and James Garner would play Joe. The supporting roles went to Fay Bainter (who had won an Oscar for Jezebel) as Mrs. Tilford, and Miriam Hopkins (who had played Martha in These Three) as Lily Mortar, Martha's aunt. Wyler had a difficult time casting Mary, the student who lies about Martha and Karen. In a rare casting error, he settled for Karen Balkin, who had starred in a regional production of The Bad Seed, a dramatization of the popular novel about a murderous child.
The failure of The Children's Hour stems from both Wyler's decision to remain too faithful to a thirty-year-old play and Balkin's overacting to such an extreme that her character's accusations lack any credibility. Wyler, inexplicably, only heightens this mischaracterization by filming some of Mary's outbursts in close-ups that are jarring and destroy the narrative flow. In addition, James Garner projects neither depth nor charm as Joe, leaving the audience wondering what Karen sees in him. Even their love scenes seem perfunctory. Nonetheless, the film contains some scenes that are among Wyler's most visually expressive.
The film opens with idyllic, rural images that mirror the feel of some early scenes in These Three. We see girls bicycling across a bridge and then playing a game of catch by a lake. The openness and playfulness reflected in these scenes stand in marked contrast to much of the rest of the film, where even the outdoor scenes seem constrained. The camera next tracks through the tree-lined entry to the Wright-Dobie School and goes inside, where a piano concert is being held for the parents. Wyler introduces Karen and Martha on opposite sides of the room in separate frames, as if to accentuate the schism between them even in the midst of a happy occasion.
He then cuts to Martha, Karen, and Aunt Lily, who are in the kitchen washing and drying glasses after the party. In this scene and in many others set in the home/school, Wyler's camera includes the ceiling in the frame, which creates a feeling of confinement. In these rooms, the ceilings seem to bear down on the characters, trapping them even when they are happy and content. Some of the rooms—especially Karen's and the one shared by Mary and Rosalie—and the corridors in the house are at angles. Wyler's camera emphasizes these angles while also employing shadows that seem to lurk everywhere. A constant atmosphere of oppressiveness thus pervades the film, robbing the school, which is also Karen and Martha's home, of any feeling of comfort.
Joe Cardin's introduction matches the oppressive feel. He is framed first by the kitchen door and then by the open space between the kitchen and the classroom behind it. Here, Wyler's use of the frame-within-a-frame structure highlights Martha's antagonistic attitude toward this intruder, who clearly wants in. When he leaves with Karen, they are filmed in a tight shot in a car—a marked divergence from the outdoor stroll and the cake they share in These Three. Their conversation is also tense: Joe wants to get married, but Karen wants to put off this commitment until the school is financially stable. In fact, there is hardly a friendly, open, or loving moment in the entire film.
When Joe drives Karen back to the school, Wyler cuts to Martha's sad face framed by her window—an image he will repeat before her suicide. When Karen goes upstairs to announce her wedding plans, Martha is alone, ironing. Wyler again emphasizes the ceiling pushing down on the two women; the beams seem to touch their heads. Then, as she hugs Karen, Martha's face echoes her desolate expression at the window moments earlier.
Wyler's most forceful compositions come at three important moments in the film, offering subtle variations on one another. In the first, after Mary makes her accusations in the backseat of her grandmother's car, Mrs. Tilford decides to stop at the school to confront the women. There she meets Lily Mortar, who is packing to leave after having a fight with her niece. Descending the stairs and dropping her suitcase, Lily notices Mrs. Tilford, who has already entered the house. Lily complains about her niece, and Mrs. Tilford questions her use of the word unnatural to describe Martha. As Lily answers, she is seated on a step separated from Mrs. Tilford by the stairway railing and bars, though joined in the frame by Wyler. Their culpabilit
y in the crime they are about to commit links them, although they are separated by the degree of their guilt. When Mrs. Tilford leaves to rejoin Mary in the car, Wyler reverts to a tight, enclosed framing. As the sequence ends, Mary looks out the rear window of the car as Wyler tracks away from the school, reversing the camera movement that first introduced the place and the festive concert inside.
Wyler later varies this linking composition when Mrs. Tilford discovers the truth about Mary. Mrs. Tilford is in her living room, her back to the camera. When she hears Mary, she turns toward the camera and calls to the girl, who is near the top of the staircase. At first, they are shown in separate frames. Then, as she calls for Mary to come to her, Mrs. Tilford walks toward the staircase, and they are joined in the same frame but at a distance. Again, the stair railing separates them, and Wyler highlights the verticals and horizontals of the banister to emphasize entrapment. When Mrs. Tilford trips as she is walking toward the stairs, she ends up sitting on the floor, framed by the doorway; Mary is still in the frame, but separated by the stairs, almost approximating the earlier framing of Mrs. Tilford and Lily Mortar. The double framing of the sitting woman and the girl above her on the stairs diminishes Mrs. Tilford. She then rises and walks silently toward the stairs as Mary, facing her grandmother, backs up. Silent and defeated, she moves to the upper level of the house and is not seen again. As is often the case in Wyler's films, a recognition scene has taken place on a staircase—Mrs. Tilford finally recognizes her granddaughter's villainy, just as Alexandra comes to know her mother's in a similar scene in The Little Foxes. Mary's backward progress up the stairs here is not quite the same as Catherine Sloper's ascent at the end of The Heiress, but the movement's similarity suggests some ambivalence in Wyler's attitude about Catherine's act of vengeance at the end of that film.
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