IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

evanston_dad This lean film adapted by William Gibson from his own stage play gets right down to business. This is not a biopic about Helen Keller or Annie Sullivan. We learn some background details about both that give their characters some context, but no more time than necessary is spent on them. Instead, this film is almost exclusively about Sullivan's time with Keller's family spent teaching Keller to communicate and her eventual breakthrough. It's an incredibly physical film -- since Keller couldn't hear, see, or speak, touch was the only sense through which she could communicate, and her family allowed her to slam, smack, and pound her way through life until she got what she wanted. Sullivan at first meets her at her own level, throwing her down into chairs, smacking her back when smacked herself, tackling her to the ground. Anne Bancroft, as Sullivan, and Patty Duke, as Keller, are sensational in these scenes and director Arthur Penn captures them with an insistent intensity. The whole film has an unsettling quality even when nothing unsettling is happening on screen, mainly due to Penn's decision to give the film the look and sound of a horror movie, with creepy, film-noir cinematography and eerie sound design.Bancroft and Duke both won Oscars for their performances, while the film brought nominations to Penn as Best Director, Gibson for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Ruth Morley for her black and white costumes.Grade: A

SplitPersonality1 Previous experience with this film: I knew the basic premise of the story, and vaguely seeing part of the movie on television when I was about ten years old. At that time, a black and white movie about "some girl" did not hold my interest.General Notes: The Miracle Worker, like many movies based on an encouraging true story, goes straight for the heartstrings. It has all of the elements of a movie that appears routinely on the Lifetime network. Character with disability. Check. People that do not understand said character with disability. Check. One person willing to defy normal conventions to help person with disability. Check. Overly dramatic score filled with sweeping strings. Check. However, this movie is saved by two things; the fine acting of Anne Bancroft, and this film's focus on the teaching methods used on Helen Keller.Positives: Anne Bancroft's performance is nothing short of brilliant. She definitely earned her Oscar portraying the stubborn, strong-willed Annie Sullivan. Patty Duke as Helen Keller was good as well, although I am not sure is was Oscar-worthy. The two worked very well together on screen, particularly in the famous tantrum scene. Helen pinches, bites, pulls hair, slaps and throws silverware in defiance of her teacher. Anne Sullivan is trying overcome several years of a family letting a child tyrant do whatever she wants. Watching this scene is like watching the proverbial irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The movie focuses on Helen Keller's inability to understand that objects have names. Annie Sullivan shows Helen sign language, but for most of the movie, it doesn't mean anything. She is just repeating the finger patterns without comprehension. Throughout the film, you see Annie Sullivan's many struggles to reach her student. When Helen finally understands, it is quite rewarding.Negatives: The lighting and camera-work. I am not sure why this was filmed in black and white. At times, the character's faces were framed in perfect silhouettes. At other times, the shadows were too large and distracting, as if the lights were placed in the wrong position. Also, the sweaty close-ups were a bit jarring as well. Not too much of a negative, but it was evident that was originally a play. Much of the dialogue seemed out of place for a film, but would work on the stage. Helen Keller's parents. Victor Jory seems to yell almost all of his lines. In fact, my notes state "Father – a bit yelly". Inga Swenson was a bit too melodramatic. In the opening scene of the movie, there is lots of screaming at the discovery of Helen's affliction. I didn't quite know what to make of it and was worried that the entire move was going to go down that path. I am glad it didn't.Mixed: The use of superimposed images. At times it worked, but I think it was a bit overdone. The best one was a dream sequence early in the film. Anne was in the foreground and her dream was very fuzzy in the background. It was well done, but it seemed like a technique that would be at home in a movie made in the 1930s, not in 1962.Overall: A solid feel-good movie that showcases two very fine actresses with great on screen chemistry. I would recommend this movie and give it a solid rating of 7.

jzappa Any movie that's fresh, advanced, forward-looking, in impression or technique, usually pushes further than almost all other mainstream movies sharing the same era or genre, which is to say: too far for some tastes. The innocuousness of most of our movies is received with such stock expectations that when an American movie goes outside that box to pull a real reaction out of us, it tends to pull that same reaction out of the trends in mainstream movies as well. So, as Arthur Penn's work would build open famously shortly hereafter, The Miracle Worker is a film that rages where most biopics tread softly. The showpiece is a one-room, nine-minute battle of wear and tear, as the teacher forces table manners on her untamed ward. It's a shatter-and-batter melee bursting at the seams, played out with thoroughgoing diligence.Likewise remarkable is Penn's sense of familial histrionics on a postwar Southern estate. Despite its complicated genesis through a range of mediums including real life, the story of Helen Keller in film form, an understandably intimidating notion, nevertheless outclasses many true stories and stage adaptations in the domain of visual technique. Penn creates clever, lasting flourishes of cinematic storytelling and atmosphere-sculpting. The calculated, leisurely dissolves, focal changes, filtering and use of light augment the well-known story in depth.There are occasions when two actresses are so in step with each other, they seem like they're but one character and one performance. Such is the situation with The Miracle Worker starring Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan a weak-sighted teacher struggling to reach blind and deaf Helen Keller played by the gifted young Patty Duke. They collaborate like few performers can, drawing us into their challenged rapport and keeping us stuck to their triumphs and catastrophes. While Duke's hardly been a solid presence in film or TV over the past thirty years, there was little misgiving of her flair and skill. Bancroft, though, sustained an outstanding career for several decades, and her performance in The Miracle Worker is astonishing for its precise vividness and emotional reverberation. Neither role lacked hefty challenges and both actresses surrendered exceptional career-making and ultimately Oscar-winning performances.Penn was a sharp leader of actors, but his work was always powerfully dynamic and state-of-the-art because of his exemplary equilibrium of attention to visual motifs and filling the atmosphere of a movie with an emotional grab of the our collars. The Miracle Worker was made in 1962, and maybe it's not the byzantine audiovisual takeover of The Manchurian Candidate, but Penn does nevertheless employ some camera, cutting and focal techniques, resulting in the story being told through the truly agitated emotional situation of Annie Sullivan. Her coarse, translucent flashbacks bring us first-hand into Sullivan's visually-impaired world. And I'll never forget those various cross-dissolves panning around and around on a loop. Or how characters will sit in silhouette in their respective moments of doubt and vulnerability.

Petri Pelkonen This is an autobiographical movie of Helen Keller (1888-1968).She becomes blind and deaf as a baby, and her life, and the lives of her parents is a battle after that.They hire a woman called Annie Sullivan (1866-1936), who has also been blind, to tutor the child.She does much more than that.The child is difficult , but Annie won't give up, no matter what.The Miracle Worker (1962) is directed by the great Arthur Penn.I borrowed the DVD from the library on his 88th birthday on Monday and liked the movie a lot.The screenplay is based on William Gibson's play from 1959.Anne Bancroft gives a powerful performance as Annie Sullivan.Bancroft was a masterful player of both dramatic and comedic parts, and here she gives a terrific dramatic performance.But there's a little comedy in her acting as well, just look at the good girl-bad girl scene, where she does some funny facial expressions.Patty Duke isn't any worse as Helen Keller.It's just amazing how she plays that very demanding part.There's a lot of physicality in both Anne's and Patty's performances, so it certainly wasn't an easy movie for either one of them.They both won an Oscar they deserved.Victor Jory and Inga Swenson are marvelous as Helen's parents, Captain Arthur Keller and Kate Keller.Andrew Prine is brilliant as James Keller.Kathleen Comegys is wonderful as Aunt Ev.The movie has lots of memorable stuff.All those teaching scenes are ones, where there's a lot of violence with a lot of face slapping and such.But Annie finally gets to her, teaching her letters and the meaning of things.One beautiful moment is when Annie sings Mockingbird to Helen.It's most touching in the end to watch the breakthrough at the water pump.This is a classic that will stay in your mind.