Bill Collins Movie Collection - Secret Garden (VHS)

About

There is suspense in the first few minutes of The Secret Garden (1949). As the credit titles appear, Bronislau Kaper's music arouses apprehension and we see a hand holding a key, slowly turning it in the lock of an old door. As the door opens, the film begins... Directed by Fred M. Wilcox and produced by Clarence Brown, The Secret Garden is an unusual film subtly adapted by Robert Ardrey from the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Author of Little Lord Fauntleroy. It is an integration of several elements of the thriller, comedy, emotional drama and psychological melodrama. It can be readily enjoyed by the young, who can focus their interest in the good story, and the sophisticated adults, who may become involved in the complex characterization and relationships at the hear of the film.

Margaret O'Brien plays Mary Lennox, a lonely, resentful child who has lost her parents in India and comes to England to be the ward of her uncle, Archibald Craven, played by Herbert Marshall. Her new home is a gloomy Yorkshire mansion surrounded by acres of well-ordered gardens in which there is the secret garden, hidden by a high wall, accessible only by a door which has not been opened for many years. Why? And whose are the cries which echo through the house at night? Why is her uncle a recluse?

Mary makes many discoveries in the house and grounds. The scene in which she first opens the door and enters the forbidden garden is one of the most spellbinding I have ever seen.

The cast includes Dean Stockwell as Colin; Brian Roper as Dickon, the young brother of the servant, Martha (Elsa Lanchester), who befriends Mary; and Gladys Cooper as the severe house-keeper.

-- Bill Collins

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Archive

Internet Archive, in The VHS Vault

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Credit

CEL Video

Subtitles

Automatic subtitles

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