Rent The Miracle Worker (1962)

Biographic Drama. - The Miracle Worker review by Steve

This adaptation by William Gibson of his own stage play retains its two wonderful Broadway leads: Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan, the educator of the deaf-blind and near mute seven year old Helen Keller played by Patty Duke. Sullivan teaches the wild, unreachable child to communicate through applying pressure to her teacher's fingers.

Sullivan went to live with Keller's family in Alabama, 1887, with the South still destitute from the Civil War. Arthur Penn frames the story and its characters in the terms of the kind of heroism normally seen in war films or epics. And that feels appropriate. Sullivan's astonishing enterprise is an act of audacious bravery, even though achieved in a domestic context.  

There is an expressionistic look, with noirish lighting and distortion. Sullivan with her pale, traumatised face, her own near blindness hidden behind black glasses looks like a visitation from a horror film. She is haunted by her agonising past in a Victorian asylum, tortured with guilt for the handicapped brother she left behind.  

This is southern gothic; it is full of atmosphere. There are long scenes of little or no dialogue or cutting, and without music. It looks artistic, but feels real. Most of all, it's Bancroft and Duke that endure, locked in the confrontation of their anguished, intimate darkness. They both won very well deserved Oscars.