The Chalk Garden

A wonderful film
I've always like Hayley Mills movies. "Pollyanna" was achingly sweet, and "The Parent Trap" was corny but delightful. However, I believe her performance in "The Chalk Garden" is her best. This well-crafted film deals with the relationship between a young girl, played by Hayley Mills, living with her grandmother and the new nanny, played by Deborah Kerr, hired to care for her. The young girl is a pyromaniac who compulsively manipulates and lies, perhaps as her way of handling what she feels is a loveless existence. Kerr's character, who has a dark secret, is able to identify with the young girl, and the movie follows her attempts to win the girl's friendship and eventual trust and to teach the girl that there is still love in her life.

This is a moving film which deals seriously with its themes. It is a little melodramatic in a 1960's sort of way, but nonetheless remains quite involving and absorbing for the audience. I enjoyed it very...

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL.
This is a rather unusual little film which is based on an unusual play by Enid Bagnold. Kerr is a mysterious woman who is applying for the position of governess at a stately old house. Kerr hasn't any experience nor references to give to her staid but essentially tender-hearted employer (played carefully by Dame Edith Evans, grotesquely dressed in lavender much of the time). Hayley Mills plays the troubled Laurel, a sprited, lying adolescent girl of 16 - who is much like Miss Madrigal (Kerr) was at the girl's same age.....There is an astonishing twist and a fairly satisfying ending - however, this movie is hardly high on most people's list of favourites, somehow. The symbolic film title refers to the chalk dominated soil of the garden - in which nothing can grow without additional nourishment - Evans hired Kerr because of the latters knowledge that nothing will possibly grow in a chalk garden without potash and other necessary and vital nutrients essential for thriving flowerbeds...

Yes, the Universal Vault Series is WIDESCREEN
Not anamorphic, but widescreen nonetheless, and the print of THE CHALK GARDEN is beautiful. Only flaws are that it's DVD-R and not pressed, which means it will function on some players while other players will reject it, and there is no menu whatsoever, no way to navigate other than manually. Otherwise, it's a knockout.

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