The house that Jack built

Douglas McVay (F & F critic) finished an article on Jack Clayton, praising his Pumpkin Eater as one of the finest works to emerge from a British studio ever, and said: "One can only hope (if without immense confidence) that the miracle will happen for a second time with Our Mother's House. But even if it doesn't, it will surely happen again at some stage in Jack Clayton's future career. Talent like his, once matured, is bound to go on reassurting itself."

I have met so many people who said that this film was disappointing. They hated kids, especially that clean gooey-spoken British child; they thought it "fell down" when adults (Dirk Bogarde, Yootha Joyce) made their appearances. They, in fact, disagreed with the original intent of Julian Gloag's novel. Bloody hell!

Clayton has always been a technical master. His films are precise, elliptical, straight forward and deeply satisfying. There were some who thought The Innocents was too loosely based on James' Turn of the Screw (Truman Capotes whimsical dialogue was a bit much, they said), and The Pumpkin Eater too literal (for Pinters superb script), and his confusing Resnais influence. Like McVay, I consider The Pumpkin Eater a fine complex and masterly film.

Our Mothers House (M.G.M.) is corruption, spiritual mismanagement, innocence reversed, a film where lighting (impeccable Larry Pizer) is as highly contrasted and important to scenes as it was in Persona and Laughton's Night Of The Hunter.

Six children witness the death of their mother in an old house. They bury her in the garden and in the tabernacle, or shrine (an old shed, complete with mother's extra-hair and mirror compactum) they enact their powerful "mother-time" through Diana (Pamela Franklin) who acts as a medium to the children's needs and care. Clayton brilliantly blurs her face as she rocks in the darkness "effectively hinting at the dissolution and substitution of personality." Charlie, their dad, (a cockney and childlike Dirk Bogarde) arrives but didn't win the confidence of Elsa (Sara Nicholls). The others eventually get to know of his cheek to rob them of all the money in their mother's savings account. (Little Jiminee can forge cheques brilliantly!) The housekeeper (Yootha Joyce, a little prettier than in Pumpkin, but wait until you see her in Finney's Charlie Bubbles!) provokes Charlie.

There's a noisy party and Diana finds him in bed with a whore. He arrives home drunk late one night and the children are in the dark, seated by the fireside. He begins to rave about their St. Violet Hook (mother) who, as a vicar's daughter, "couldn't get enough of it", and how they are all bastards. He flings a cameo of her into the fire. Diana rushes forward and beats him to death with a poker. The children, crying, leave soon after, with their budgie, for where?

As in The Innocents (Miss Franklin's first movie), Pumpkin, and Room at the Top, it has been proven that Clayton's adept handling of children has not been rivalled by anyone. Its bewildering atmosphere is tender, the wideeyed children going about their individual tasks. Because little Gerty has allowed a foreigner to give her a ride on his motor bike, "Mother says her hair must be cut off, or no Mother's comb." The eldest boy horrifyingly does this, with the child's screams intensifying, and distorted lens providing the most moving parts of the film.

Georges Delerue (the greatest film composer alive) provides a score of such haunting compassion and vestigal texture, it alone for me is the deciding factor, separating the film from the soggy horror tale it isn't, into the beautifully lethargic and visually devastating little film it is.