Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 249: Wed Sep 11

The Miracle Worker (Penn, 1962): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.10pm


This presentation features an introduction by Clare Baines, BFI Inclusion Partner and Founder, Crip Club. There are other screenings in September and October. Details here.

Time Out review:
Arthur Penn's remarkable screen version of William Gibson's play about Helen Keller, which he directed on Broadway. It's a stunningly impressive piece of work, typically (for Penn) deriving much of its power from the performances. Patty Duke as the young girl born deaf and blind, and Anne Bancroft as the stubborn Irish governess who helps her overcome her inability to speak, spark off each other with a violence and emotional honesty rarely seen in the cinema, lighting up each other's loneliness, vulnerability, and plain fear. What is in fact astonishing is the way that, while constructing a piece of very carefully directed and intelligently written melodrama, Penn manages to avoid sentimentality or even undue optimism about the value of Helen's education, and the way he achieves such a feeling of raw spontaneity in the acting.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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