Henry James on Film

In The Cage could be made into an interesting film.

xp I was getting 2 Henry James stories confused. I thought it was the Innocents because of a plot point that I don't want to give away.
Turns out it was Turn of The Screw

Right it wasn't 2 James stories it was 2 versions of the same thing.
I was remembering reading that it was based on a James story which i thought was the innocents. So now I see that that is a version of his earlier story. & like i thought this is a further variation.

Turn of the Screw = 1898 novella (or "beautiful and blessed nouvelle") by Henry James. James described it as "a trap for the unwary". Edmund Wilson was the first critic to suggest (in 1934, in a essay entitled 'The Ambiguity of Henry James') that the whole business is a "neurotic case of sex repression". The Oxford University Press edition of Turn of the Screw and Other Stories has an excellent introduction by T.J. Lustig that explores in some depth the usefulness and limits of this 'theory' - recommended reading.

The Innocents - derived at first from a stage version of The Turn of the Screw (not to be confused with Benjamin Britten's 1954 operatic version) by William Archibald, final screenplay by Archibald, Truman Capote (a tortoise called Gerald could only be his contribution) with additional dialogue by John Mortimer. The film treats the ghosts as 'real'. Quint, the 'monster' in the Turn of the Screw, is here played by Peter Wyngarde. Marlon Brando (!) plays Quint in Michael Winner's prequel to Turn of the Screw, The Nightcomers. I would also recommend Christopher Frayling's commentary track on the BFI DVD of The Innocents (he is good for example on the fabulous opening 'folk song' contributed by Paul Dehn, who amongst other things wrote film criticism, and the screenplays for Goldfinger and some of the Planet of the Apes movies. Really interesting guy - his partner was James Bernard, who wrote the music for lots of Hammer films.)

As Morbs sez, The Others is clearly indebted to The Innocents (and also to things like Robert Wise's The Haunting, which again has some of the same general atmos, but is instead based on a Shirley Jackson novel rather the Henry James) but is nominally an 'original' (and has iircc some significant differences to Turn of the Screw.)

The Others is more indebted to film adaptations of James than James, I'd say.

Pretty insulting to James to see it otherwise

I've also read 'The Romance of Certain Old Clothes' an earlier and much more straightforward supernatural story by James, one of the sources for Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating (hence its inclusion in this season - in fact, the film only vamps very lightly on the James story in the 'dream' sequences with Bulle Ogier).

ghastly reviews for this new one

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-aspern-papers

woaoow!