I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I read "Turn of the Screw" over 20 years ago but I recall that it struck me as dead boring. I watched this adaptation in the hopes the story would grow on me over the years. Alas! The film has lovely sets, costumes, and music. It occasionally has decent acting. But overall it can be watched on fast-forward most of the time and not lose anything. Perhaps it relies on the idea that viewers will be so familiar with James' story that dialogue and even (gasp) exposition might be necessary to flesh things out a bit. I learned more from reading the viewer comments here than I did from watching the film.Poor Jodhi May must have drunk gallons of water during filming, since she seems to spend about 50% of her on screen time with eyes bulging and her mouth hanging open. Her descent into madness is believably gradual, but her Victorian ideas of purity and evil seem to leap from nowhere. Her character desperately needed context in order to be more clear.I saw "The Innocents" with Deborah Kerr a few years ago and it was genuinely creepy. This Masterpiece Theatre production lacked Innocents' clarity of narrative and commitment to interpretation. Instead, it wandered through far too many long shots, pan shots, and crane shots across an English country estate. And the ending was completely anti-climactic, with May's emotional level the same as it had been throughout most of the rest of the film, when instead it should have been leaping off the screen.Three stars for pretty pictures and occasional acting; minus seven stars for poor script, vision, and direction.

The most important thing in here it's that The turn of the screw works as an adaptation rather than anything else. That's why I think the comparison between this TV movie with The innocents (Jack Clayton; 1961) is unfair. Although both films comes from the Henry James novella, Clayton's emphasizes in the ghosts story while one this focus on corruption and evil and character development; it´s a straightforward story but doesn't looses the strength included in the written words. It´s based on a slow pace, but never falls into boredom. And my guess is that, for a proper enjoy of this film, it's a basic thing is to have read the novel first.

Henry James wrote, perhaps the most famous ghost story in the world: The Turn of the Screw.The suggestion in the book is that the governess might be having hallucinations brought on by sexual hysteria, OR she might, indeed be caught between the living children under her care, and the dead lovers who communicate with each other through the children. Benjamin Britten wrote an opera that is absolutely bone-chilling called The Turn of the Screw. Many films have also been made either called The Turn of the Screw or, in a brilliant adaptation, The Innocence.In The Innocence, Sir Michael Redgrave is the owner of Blye and the person who hires Deborah Kerr to be in complete charge of his niece and nephew.In this new Masterpiece Theater adaptation, called The Turn of the Screw, Colin Firth plays The Master of Blye who hires Jodi May as governess.Redgrave is older, detached and uninterested in the workings and daily problems of Blye and simply wants someone to run things for him.Firth is young and VERY sexy. So much so, that he uses his sexuality to convince a naive and hesitant May to take the position.This sexual attraction, on May's part, is underlined with a scene where she enters The Master's bedroom at Blye, and touches his clothes.But the haunting of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are presented as VERY real, and very threatening.What is merely suggested in the older Kerr version, is played out with more emphasis in this Masterpiece Theater version.The sets are lush. The setting beautiful. The children too perfect. Flora is smug and deceptive. Niles is heart-breaking in his corruption.The question remains. Was the governess mad or was she overwhelmed by the evil of Peter Quint? Were the children possessed or was the governess?An excellent version, although there are scenes in the Kerr version that are truly jolting.

This was an interesting adaptation of James' equivocal little masterpiece. This production leaned a bit towards the Freudian camp/interpretation.I liked it. They took a bit of liberty on some of the Jamesian dialogue e.g. Flora's speech to the governess by the lake. Not as many liberties, though, as in "Wings of the Dove"Note for the pedantic: One surprising bit was the first apparition of Quint; he appears in the afternoon in broad daylight. Devotees of the James' piece and the ghost story frisson will surely remember that this occurred in twilight.