As seems to be the norm for this project, the British have their own peculiar variations, though Esther Costello feels like an American brand because of the standard tilt by Joan Crawford. Lousy performer, the camera loves her despite this, and yet in this muck raking narrative, she seems to struggle in a way that Nicholson's skill would not readily reveal to a viewer, to dim her alpha status for the sake of the story. Heather Sears is far less titanic than Patty Duke as the famous mute, yet there is also more realism, oddly, despite the fact that we're familiar with the prescriptive patterns the studio system followed in the fifties.
I am bewildered, Roger Ebert is dead, and I would have to make the time, or will have to if this really interests me, to discover why Monsarrat wrote this novel, and I do not mean it simply as a question of money, but as a question of Keller's fame conflicted with the issue of exploitation. I would not know where to begin, but it has thrown me a curve. Purchasing the novel is neither here nor there; I do not really wish to buy it. Looking at it can wait until I make space to browse in library, but I keep asking myself if the naval officer was fair to the iconic heroine, and I'm entirely in the dark; in addition, the wiki entry suggests the script substantially reversed the book. The movie, however, covers all the bases I've covered. Sexual development and abuse, chicanery, compliance over tyranny, rebellion, the angel demon dichotomy.
Beneath the film we have, there seems to be a counter narrative, one that was not followed through but would have been more intriguing, though we've seen this motif many times as well: abject poverty creating a banshee devoid of normal human intercourse. It opens the film after Esther's accident unique for its era. I'll see what I can do in terms of further inquiry, at least in a future tense.
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