"That Kind of Love"

The Children's Hour (Mirisch; United Artists) is Director William Wyler's second try at doing right by Lillian Hellman's 1934 stage melodrama, whose burden was that lesbianism may be regrettable, but a nasty, spying child is simply intolerable. In 1936, when the first screenplay was made, Hollywood shied away from abnormal psychology. Wyler dropped the tainted Hellman title (the picture was renamed These Three) and changed an irregular triangle (young doctor loves girl teacher, and so does another girl teacher) into a right triangle (the two girl teachers love the young doctor).

The triangle is clearly irregular in the remake, and Shirley MacLaine, all forlorn, gives the best performance of her career as the teacher who is sickened to find that she is partly homosexual. Though the taboo word "lesbian" does not defile the sound track, the handling of "that kind of love" is reasonably adult (it is customary to praise Hollywood for being reasonably adult, as one praises a three-year-old for not spilling too much oatmeal).

But much of the film is directed--somewhat surprisingly, considering Wyler's reputation--on the assumption that the perceptive level of the audience is that of a roomful of producers' relatives. Audrey Hepburn, the other teacher, gives her standard, frail, indomitable characterization, which is to say that her eyes water constantly (frailty) and her chin is forever cantilevered forward (indomitability). Little is asked of James (Maverick) Garner, and he gives it.

All the commotion begins when a sulky, clever little girl (Karen Balkin), brooding over a punishment, hits intuitively on a devastating lie: she tells her grandmother that she has seen the two teachers embracing. Here Wyler's notion of registering childish malevolence is to have twelve-year-old Actress Balkin roll her eyes, scowl, bare her teeth and jerk her head back like a duchess regarding a spider, every time she is on-camera. To make sure no one misses the significance of those moments when the girl is hatching her nastiness, Wyler underscores with vibrant significance music. Composer Alex North's score, a banality that would seem gross in a John Wayne picture, is one of the bigger burdens of the film.

Hysterical parents shut down the school, Actress MacLaine gives viewers a touching and indelible lesson in what cinema acting is all about, and finally in despair she hangs herself. What should have been the final scene follows: Audrey Hepburn looking in horror at her friend's body.

But Hour cannot forgo a graveyard scene, and afterward viewers are treated to another study of the Hepburn chin, as she walks down the obligatory poplar-lined pathway toward Understanding Fiance Garner (who had deserted briefly under fire). There is no way for viewers to ignore the implied happy ending (the Broadway version ended grimly), for a great surge of it's-really-all-right music spills into the theater. It is really not all right; it is not all right at all.

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