The Children's Hour

Buckle in. This is a long one. When I saw the description of this movie, I expected an interesting drama. What I did not expect was a movie with themes as complex as this, coming from 1961, and based on a play from the 1930's. And I definitely did not expect a movie as honest and harsh about its themes as this is. I for sure thought it'd get a Hollywood ending. Nope, The Children's Hour is as blunt and serious and unromantic as it gets. Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine play Karen and Martha, a pair of women who own and operate an all-girls boarding school. Karen is engaged to Joe (James Garner), a doctor, whom Martha is rather cold towards. Martha also struggles with her aunt Lily, who is selfish and priggish and unpleasant. One of the kids, Mary, is a malicious, devious girl, and through a series of events, she comes into some second-hand knowledge, which she fills in with some made-up ideas, and tells them to her grandmother, all to get Karen and Martha in trouble for punishing her for a misdeed. The rumor she spreads is that the two are lesbians, which triggers a mass exodus from the school and the implosion of their lives, all over a lie. Except ... it may not be ENTIRELY a lie. There is a lot going on in The Children's Hour: themes of friendship, of how rumors spread and take on a life of their own (and how the retraction of it rarely spreads as far), of confronting and reckoning with oneself, about the damage of (whether true or not) outing someone against their will, if public perception can be reframed, and of course, homophobia and gay panic. This was a bold as all hell movie for 1961. It may be a bold movie in 2024. I'm a cishet male, I certainly can't say one way or the other for someone in the LGBTQ+ community, but I can say for me, this was a LOT. To start with, some may take issue with the movie as it does not have a plainly spoken outright defense of homosexuality in light of the town suddenly coming down with a case of gay teacher panic. If you do, I understand. Again, cishet here, this doesn't strike me in the same way. However, by the movie's end, when Martha has come to terms with the idea that she does have romantic feelings for Karen, Karen doesn't stop being friends with her. She suggests they leave town and start fresh somewhere else. That's friendship. That's love. In my eyes, that's a strong defense, and gives this movie the backbone it needs in 2024 to survive looking like the response to gay panic is dismissive repudiation. YMMV, but I found that warded off any criticisms one might have about this part of the narrative. The movie also touches on the power of rumors and misinformation in a way that is still relevant today. We live in a world where teachers are still treated as these sacrosanct, genderless, sexless entities. Teachers get fired for having OnlyFans accounts, and are still assumed to be perverts and predators if they're gay. So in 1961, when gay people were pariahs, and the whisper of potential homosexuality was a death sentence, the events in The Children's Hour have a resonance to them. One child's thoughtless rumor, just to be a brat, destroys a business, ends an engagement, and ends up costing Martha her life. When Martha and Karen try to sue for slander, they lose because Martha's aunt, who could support their story, is out of town and refuses to come back for selfish reasons. Later, when the lie is finally discovered, the woman who spread it apologies and says she's gone to the judge to have the verdict overturned, but Karen knows the damage is done; the apology and the reversed judgment won't carry as far or as fast, and it won't fix their damaged reputations. People will forever look at them with suspicion, no matter how much evidence supports them, because the wormy roots of rumor and assumption and prejudice are too deep to be uprooted by facts. The Children's Hour isn't interested in sugar-coating this, and it also doesn't bother trying to gin up some karmic balancing of the scales. There's nothing that could happen to the girl who lied and the grandmother who spread the lie that could balance out the ruin and devastation they caused, so the movie doesn't even bother to try. I appreciate that realism, even if it renders the movie a rather bleak watch. All of this would be enough for a strong movie, but then you have powerhouse performances by the three leads. Hepburn's Karen is a strong, determined woman who genuinely loves what she does and loves Martha and Joe. Maclaine's Martha is a sweet woman, troubled by feelings she doesn't understand and for which she's been told by society are wrong and to be ashamed of. Garner's Joe, meanwhile, is caught in the middle; he loves Karen, he thinks Martha is a good woman despite her iciness to him, and he remains dedicated to making a good life with Karen until things spiral out of control. And Karen Balkin as Mary, the wretched, hate-filled, spiteful girl who causes all the damage is memorable. I believed she knew what she was doing at every minute, and took malignant glee out of doing it ... until she got caught. This isn't a movie for a good time. This is an excellently-acted movie, and delicately directed to allow the performances to rule, especially in long sequences where the dialogue needs to be center stage and the score disappears. The movie is, sadly, still too relevant, where self-assigned moral police think their biases should be the law of the land, and good people are persecuted for daring to have a personal life other people don't approve of. And the movie's commitment to being as harshly realistic, as unpleasant as it is, is as refreshing as it is harrowing. If you like powerhouse performances, and don't mind some social commentary laid on top, and further don't mind being bummed out in the end, this is a movie to search out.