By the time Bill Wyler adapted it in 1961, Lillian Hellman‘s play ‘The Children’s Hour‘ and its big screen adaptations already had a history of nearly three decades. The play itself was the first major hit on Broadway and the first major scandal of Lillian Hellman‘s career as a playwright. The reason was that the story about the libel that destroys the lives of two women and the fiance of one of them had a lesbian undertone, which was still taboo on most American scenes. So taboo in fact that, in order to make the first film adaptation of the play in 1936, Bill Wyler and the producers at the Goldwyn studios changed the title and removed all references to homosexuality, complying with the code of decency and morality on the screens of Hollywood. The 1961 film is more faithful to the text of Hellman’s play, reverts to the original credits and title, and recruits three of the top stars of the day to produce. 63 years later ‘The Children’s Hour‘ is a good opportunity to find out again how much some conceptions have evolved and the reflection on screens of some formerly taboo subjects, but also how current others have remained. In many ways, including cinematic ones, ‘The Children’s Hour‘ is a film that has not aged very well. And yet, some other taboos were broken by this production and several scenes in the film surprise and make watching or re-watching the film not at all unnecessary or unpleasant.
The story takes place in a small American town not precisely defined as a geographical place. Karen and Martha, friends since college, own a boarding school with about 20 girls in their early teens as pupils. They work hard together with a more aged music teacher who is also a singer in musicals. One of the girls is called Mary and she is an undisciplined schemer who, when punished, invents a story based on the amplification and twisting of banal gestures about an alleged ‘unnatural’ connection between the two teacher friends. Mary’s grandmother, who is also a wealthy patron of the school and the aunt of Karen’s fiance, withdraws the little girl from school and spreads the rumor that the naughty child made up. Karen and Martha wake up in one day with the school empty of children, their life business destroyed, their personal lives influenced by the moral judgments of those around them. Furthermore, even if the story is made up, the feelings of one of the two women are still beyond mere friendship.
Love triangles in which one of the relationships is between lovers of the same gender were scandalous in the 1930s, hardly accepted in the 1960s, and are part of the norm these days. The subject of slander, which today we call ‘fake news’, is as actual as possible, and so is that of moral judgments that can destroy lives or careers and that today dominate not only many communities in cities like the one in the film, but also many other very diverse environments, from universities to corporations, that censor their language or morals according to criteria of extreme political correctness. Bill Wyler‘s 1961 film introduces yet another innovative plot element – a pre-teen girl who is the source of everything bad that happens in the film. It still took courage at the time to detach a child character from an idyllic vision. Unfortunately, the execution of ‘The Children’sHour‘ is largely tributary to a cinematic style that belongs more to the 40s than the 60s. The background music with sweet violins is downright annoying, and the static interior scenes are a constant reminder that we are watching the screening of a theatrical drama. Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine and James Garner act in a style that can be used as an example of the term ‘overacting’. We have to wait for the final scenes to see emotions that seems genuine to justify the intense acting of the two actresses. Even Wyler eventually breaks free and shoots a terrific final scene, finally out in the open, with the moving camera following Audrey Hepburn in close-up. A single final scene, however good as it may be, cannot save an entire film.