Years later, her parents, Kate ( Inga Swenson) and Arthur ( Victor Jory), are at a loss about what to do to educate or occupy Helen, whose energetic and inquisitive nature puts a strain on their patience and their household. A film that is, all at once: a cloying exercise in middlebrow emotional wool-gathering an endurance-test for protagonist and viewer alike almost gothic in its mise-en-scene, the lighting particularly and something like a Hollywood primer on Ordinary Language Philosophy (It’s Hollywood does Wittgenstein in Alabama).Īfter contracting scarlet fever as an infant, Helen Keller ( Patty Duke) became deaf and blind. What is in fact astonishing is the way that, while constructing a piece of very carefully directed and intelligently written melodrama, Penn manages to avoid sentimentality or even undue optimism about the value of Helen's education, and the way he achieves such a feeling of raw spontaneity in the acting.Adapted from a play by William Gibson, though based on the story of the real Anne Sullivan, Arthur Penn’s The Miracle Worker is a strange thing. Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft spark off each other with a violence and emotional honesty rarely seen in the cinema, lighting up each other's loneliness, vulnerability, and plain fear.
deriving much of its power from the performances. Time Out London opined, "It's a stunningly impressive piece of work.
#THE MIRACLE WORKER 1962 AWARDS TV#
TV Guide rates the film 4½ out of a possible five stars and calls it "a harrowing, painfully honest, sometimes violent journey, astonishingly acted and rendered." And little Miss Duke, in those moments when she frantically pantomimes her bewilderment and desperate groping, is both gruesome and pitiable." However, Miss Bancroft's performance does bring to life and reveal a wondrous woman with great humor and compassion as well as athletic skill. This is the disadvantage of so much energy. and the violent struggle to make her comprehend words makes for sameness in these encounters and eventually an exhausting monotony. But the very intensity of them and the fact that it is hard to see the difference between the violent struggle to force the child to obey. are intensely significant of the drama and do excite strong emotional response. seem to be more frequent and prolonged than they were in the play and are shown in close-ups, which dump the passion and violence right into your lap, the sheer rough-and-tumble of the drama becomes more dominant than it was on the stage.
But because the physical encounters between the two. In his review in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther observed, "The absolutely tremendous and unforgettable display of physically powerful acting that Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke put on in William Gibson's stage play The Miracle Worker is repeated by them in the film. John Bliss as Admissions Officer (uncredited).Dale Ellen Bethea as Martha (uncredited).
In the midst of the battle, Anne ultimately teaches Helen to make a connection between her hand signs and the objects in Helen's world for which they stand. What ensues is a battle of wills as Anne breaks down Helen's walls of silence and darkness through persistence, love, and sheer stubbornness. In response they send Anne Sullivan (Anne Bancroft), a former student, to the Keller home to tutor her. Unable to deal with her, her terrified and helpless parents contact the Perkins School for the Blind for assistance. Young Helen Keller (Patty Duke), blind and deaf since infancy due to a severe case of scarlet fever, is frustrated by her inability to communicate and subject to frequent violent and uncontrollable outbursts as a result.