Back to Work

Last night I watched a film called The Innocents, directed by Jack Clayton, and based on the short novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. The film stars Deborah Kerr as a governess in presumably Victorian England. She is hired to look after the orphaned neice and nephew of an extremely wealthy, and almost always absent, man. The governess goes to live on the man's vast country estate. However, she soon comes to believe the place is haunted by the ghosts of the previous governess and her brutal boyfriend, who have very sinister intentions towards the two children. The film, like the story is very ambiguous. It is very slow-moving, with the horror mostly suggested through the interplay of light and shadow, distorted sounds and so on. However for some reason the film feels far scarier than most of the more graphically gruesome horror films.

I also listened to the first part of a radio adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. It wasn't really an adaptation, it was just someone reading the story. It was good though. Horror can work really well on radio, especially late at night, when you switch all the lights out, your imagination can run riot.

Today, of course, was our first day at our new desks. As a result it took ages to get everything sorted out, and put on the desks, and then arranged so that it was bearable, and to check that everything was working, and also to find out where everything was supposed to go. I was glad to get out of work today, but then I usually am!