These Three

This film is a censorship document. The source is Lillian Hellman's 1934 play The Children's Hour, drawn from a case in nineteenth-century Edinburgh in which two women teachers were destroyed by a pupil's accusation that they were having a sexual relationship. When Samuel Goldwyn acquired the rights he accepted a condition set by Joseph Breen of the Hays Office: every suggestion of lesbianism, and anything else likely to be found objectionable, would be removed. Hellman rewrote her own play and changed the accusation: the two women are now said to be involved with the same man. William Wyler said so plainly afterwards, calling it not the picture he had intended and describing it as emasculated. Twenty-five years later he filmed the same play again in its original form, as The Children's Hour. Bonita Granville, as the child who invents the lie, was nominated for an Oscar, in what is regarded as one of the most frightening child performances on film. Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon and Joel McCrea lead. Who it is for: viewers who want to see how censorship reshapes a text, and who like classical Hollywood drama. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the play's actual subject. All of the film's tension comes from working around the thing it cannot say.