United States, 1962
Directed by Arthur Penn
With Anne Bancroft (Annie Sullivan), Patty Duke (Helen Keller), Inga Swenson (Kate Keller), Victor Jory (Captain Arthur Keller), Andrew Pine (James Keller)
This story is born out of despair and chaos. Two long sequences of events, edited in a quick and jerky way, define the drama and introduce the lead characters, captured in stunning visual compositions. The first centers on the tragedy hitting the Kellers, who find out that a congestion causes their daughter Helen to be blind, deaf, and mute during a night scene full of emotions and shouts which sounds very much like a hyperbolic melodrama but which is the harbinger of the many tantrums and tears the couple would have as the girl has grown up more over a few years like a wild animal, disrupting the life the couple tries to have on their Alabama estate. The titles have been boldly used as a shortcut between the medical disaster and the present situation, a striking ellipsis forcing the audience to face the dreadful consequences of what should have been a medical routine – delivering a baby – but has become an ordeal.
The second sequence of events derives from a family quarrel that abruptly ended the previous one: this is the journey of an employee from a New England institution taking care of impaired children, a young woman hired to give Helen Keller a way to express herself and to behave. Annie Sullivan is compelled to hop from one train to another and as she meanders down to Alabama she is assailed by blurred visions of her tragic past, when she was herself fully blind and sent to an asylum along with her little brother who had tuberculosis-caused deformities. These images would reappear in the course of the story, a stark reminder that this first job, after she graduated, is her opportunity to demonstrate she is able to fend for herself while preventing other unlucky kids to experience the same horrors as she did. For her first pupil, this job is about getting as normal a kid as her parents wish; for this would-be teacher, this is about vindicating her personal fight, beliefs, and hopes.
After that sharp presentation of who matters and what the stakes are, the narrative turns out to be a long fight as Helen is so wild and disconnected from the world that her intelligence and sentiments seem impossible to reach – “How to reach you”, is the question Annie Sullivan would often ask; and the parents did not make things easier by spoiling Helen and letting her impulses run unchecked, as pointed by Helen’s half-brother, James Keller. It should be noted that he was born from a former marriage of the father; Arthur Keller is a rather old man who embraced the military career and later married his current wife, and Helen’s mother, Kate, a much younger, and quieter, person than him. Playing out against the ramblings of Captain Keller on the Civil War, the relationship between the pupil who cannot accept discipline and the teacher who cannot give up on the job becomes an epic battle, full of shouts and tears, high on emotions and drama, unfolding in three parts.
The first part turns the house of the Kellers into a battleground as the nice if rough welcome Helen gives to Annie gives way to a constant clash of wills that reaches an incredible climax in a physical fight in the dining room, a long, shocking, mesmerizing sequence shot as it was a boxing match. The second part asserts Annie ’s authority as she settles down in a small pavilion in the estate alone with the girl to compel Helen to tolerate her and to learn behaviors and words. As Helen seemingly improves herself, she is brought back to her native house, a celebration of success that becomes another test of wills but ultimately vindicates Annie’s principles and stubbornness in a poignant finale. Over this course of events, the narration’s physical space widens, reflecting the slow change in Helen’s mind and her wider understanding of the world. Till the last minutes, however, her ability to communicate remains uncertain – but then it suddenly and powerfully springs (quite literally, as the spark is the handling of a well’s pump – water proves a key element of her narrative), in another frantic and thrilling scene where rushing from one point of the compositions to another no longer implies panic, rebellion, or anger like before, but acknowledging and embracing people and things.
The narration feels like a solidly-build ship that has willfully entered rough seas only to chart her own ways one sea after another, getting steadier and then, after an ultimate maneuver, reaching the port, in this case the final shot, unfolding by night at the Kellers’ house, which stand as the perfect antithesis of the first images – the betrayal of life by health giving way to a new intimacy that can start life all over again. The directorial effort is boldly conceived, carefully calculated, and decisively carried out; it injects spectacular, concrete dynamism into the shots where the characters face off, the wild force quick to hit or to wonder (Annie’s instinct was right: Helen had a real intelligence just waiting to be stimulated) and the fierce believer keen on raising to the challenge. Annie always observes, assesses, and jumps on the occasion: actress Anne Bancroft puts an amazing performance, restlessly conveying the zeal of the teacher and the worries of the former blind and asylum victim, at turns mischievous, relentless, touching. Her partner Patty Duke also offers a must-see performance, a shocking presence seemingly out of reach, though she sometimes flirts with theatrics.
Indeed, she used to play this role on Broadway. Director Arthur Penn’s film is an adaptation of a play which was an offshoot of a television production; each time, the texts were written by William Gibson who just made into artistic creations real facts. Helen Keller did exist and did have the same tragic fate and later revival; thanks to Annie Sullivan, she developed a brilliant intelligence that enabled her to be the first deaf person to graduate from an American university; she went on becoming an influential activist and writer. The film is a truly dynamic, perceptive, and riveting depiction of the key period that transformed her forever at the end of the 1880s; if the topic has the appeal of a melodrama, Arthur Penn avoids a sentimental or heroic approach but stays remarkably close to the characters and their struggles, shooting with consummate skills a strongly delineated and organized narration that cannot leave the audience unconcerned.