Review: The Children's Hour

Genre: Drama

Year: 1961

Runtime: 107 min.

Director: William Wyler

Starring: Audrey Hupburn

Shirley MacLaine

James Garner

Summary: Karen Wright and Martha Dobie have worked hard to raise a girl's bording school. Mary, one of the girls, gets punished for telling a lie. She gets angry about that and tells her grandmother, that Martha is jealous of Karen, who wants to marry Dr. Joe Cardin, and tells her that Martha's feelings are unnatural. Her grandmother believes her and takes her out off school.
Other parents the words and a few days later there aren't any kids at school anymore. Martha and Karen don't understand what's going on. One father tells them about the rumor and they get upset.
Their perfect life quickly turned into a nightmare. Karen's fiancé lose his job for being friend with a "homosexuelle" couple and there's nobody left who believe the true story.

This movie is based on a play (same title) from 1934(!) by Lillian Hellman.

Trailer:






Positive: The way this movie is made is quite interesting. Usually movies contains lot of scenes where nobody is talking and you just have to watch what's happening. In this movie there's hardly ever a moment where nobody talks. You really have to concentrate on what they are talking about. It's like following some interesting discussions.
And the topic of course. It's about homosexuality, but in an interesting way. There is this child, Mary, who's angry and tells her grandmother a lie about her teachers. And this lie ruined them. Everybody believed the child's story.
You definitely don't stop thinking about the whole story for a while.

Negative: I found it a bit hard to follow from time to time, because they just discuss and there is not much happening. I know, I mentioned the same thing at "positive", but it is positive AND negative.
I can't think of anything else.

Sexual content: This movie is about homosexuality, but it does not contain homosexual scenes. 

Karen kissed his fiancé once and hugged him several times. And Karen kissed Martha on the cheek. This was before the rumor and it was just in a friendly way, because she wanted to thank her for something (or something like that...)

Violence: No physical violence, but I consider it as violence what Mary did to Karen and Martha.

Music: Music? Can't remember? Was there music? 

Actors: Mary is the typical angry child ;) And Audrey Hepburn is fantastic!

My Opinion: If you like old movies and want to watch something about a serious topic - go watch it!
It's such an interesting movie and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I also had a great discussion about this movie with one of my best friends. You also have to imagine the scandal, when the play was written in 1934. It was a great success, but at the same time it was forbidden.
What to think about this movie? On the one hand there is this terrible lie and on the other hand there is the fact that from the moment when people start talking about a relationship between Karen and Martha they all turned away from them and didn't even want to talk to them. That's horrible, because before the rumor people saw them as good teachers and liked them.
I think there are two points to think about after watching this movie:

• How would you react when you find out that your teacher (or someone you always liked) has homosexual feelings? And if you are against homosexuality: How to treat them?
• How a lie can ruin someones life and how important it is to be honest and always tell the truth!

Rating: 4-5 stars