In the film adaptation of Enid Bangold's novel and play "The Chalk Garden", the soil is rich but the trees are barren. Rich soil comes with the territory when Ross Hunter is producing, and if the style of this picture seems more suited to a late-period Lana Turner or overheated Dorothy Malone, it is only because Hunter's style is so omnipresent that it always threatens to override the subject matter. The picture is gorgeously made though, and it is hard to object to the look of the film, with its beautiful sets and appealing costumes, straight from a mid 1950's studio soap, even though it was filmed in the mid 1960's and seems almost a throwback to that earlier decade of filmmaking, which again, is probably just a side effect of it being a Ross Hunter production. Hunter's fingerprints are much more evident on the film than that of director Ronald Neame, who made more cinematic work of a novel and play with "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" in 1969 and even the spectacle of epic disaster with 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure". The direction is competent and doesn't interfere with the story, but does seem lacking a certain imagination that would fit the story of a young girl who is a habitual liar and troublemaker.
This holy terror of a teenage girl, Laurel, is spoiled by her indulgent grandmother, discarded by her mother in favor of a new husband, and the cause of ruin of a queue of nannies and governesses, each of whom have been swiftly dealt with by young Laurel. One poor applicant is even scared away by Laurel's wildness before she is ever interviewed for the position. The audience is meant to see Laurel as a misunderstood young girl on the verge of womanhood, swept away by a confusing undercurrent of emotion (symbolized rather heavily by the ocean she loves to sketch drawings of), and yet, she comes off more as a spoiled brat who wants nothing more than a good smack across the rear end. Hayley Mills is very well-cast in this role, cranking up her comedic prankishness from Disney's "The Parent Trap" into more disturbing behavior. What is most disturbing about Laurel is not her love of starting fires or unearthing secrets about her caretakers that cause their dismissal, but rather the feeling that the girl can be redeemed by the one thing she doesn't have: love. That may be a trite assumption, however, and though the acting out may be seen as strictly a response to behavioral problems, we never get a clear enough picture of Laurel to explain her self-hatred. In a well-performed scene, Laurel is asked where she wants to be and she replies "dead...and in hell", like a more chipper version of the disembodied voice of Mercedes McCambridge that would eminate from the mouth of Linda Blair nearly a decade later in "The Exorcist".
Top-billed Deborah Kerr is in noble, stiff-upper-lip mode as the newly arrived governess, who of course has a deep, dark secret of her own for Laurel to discover. Her characterization here is not one of Kerr's strongest, and in fact marks the second disappointing performance of 1964 when considered along with her maudlin Hannah Jelks in John Huston's "The Night of the Iguana", released the same year. When you take into account that only three years earlier, Kerr had given the performance of her career in Jack Clayton's "The Innocents", it is extremely disappointing that there is no fire in her work in either of these films. Perhaps the characters themselves were not interesting enough to invite said fireworks. Certainly the unstable Miss Giddens from "The Innocents" (which I've written about before) is an extremely rich character , one which Kerr fills in and shades with every color in her actor's palette. But in "The Chalk Garden", even in Kerr's big reveal near the end, her confessional scene, lacks any real emotional investment. She's still going through the motions of her nanny duties, like Mary Poppins but without the twinkle in her eye and the dancing chimney sweeps behind her. Kerr is simply too good an actress to be wasted on such an impassive role. She may be the glue that holds the picture together, but hers is not the performance we remember fondly afterwards. Perhaps because she was nearing the end of her reign as one of the foremost leading ladies of the era, Kerr decided to take it easy and leave the heavy acting to young Mills and the film's other veteran performers.
These two dependable character actors provide exceptional supporting work that definitely make up for some of what the lead role lacks. Sir John Mills (Hayley's real life father) is the household butler, and presents what I consider to be almost a textbook example of a solid supporting role: he has no direct bearing on the main story arc or plot, but adds texture to the film, which would be less enjoyable without his presence. Mills hits exactly the right notes as a long-time family servant who has Laurel's number from the get-go, and even goes along with some of her more playful lies, but proves where his loyalties lie by alerting Kerr to Laurel's more devious activities. There is slightly more than a hint of flirtation between the Mills and Kerr characters, which thankfully goes nowhere, avoiding what could have been a ponderous middle-age romantic subplot.
In a role that earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, Dame Edith Evans handles the role of Laurel's doting grandmother as one would bite into a juicy steak: she doesn't nibble around the corners of the role daintily, but rather dives right in, slathering up every bite and then drooling happily over the empty plate. Evans' line readings are, as always, delightful and a joy to listen to, but when it comes down to it, she's played this type of part so very many times before. The motivation of the grandmother spoiling Laurel is her disappointment with how Laurel's mother (Evans' daughter) turned our, and her determination to keep Laurel with her, now that the mother has reappeared and wants her back. Evans makes the most out of this role, even as the plot positions her as a type of villainess, albeit a rather benevolent one; she maintains a sense of order, always. Evans, Kerr, and Miss Mills represent a trinity of Englishwomen: the past, present, and future of the country, as it were. The only other prominent actress in the cast, whose name escapes me, portrays Laurel's mother and has two brief scenes, but makes so little impact on the picture that we must believe Laurel inherited all her spirit from her late father, or from the grandmother, whose extravagant crotchitiness must have skipped a generation. It is easy to see why Laurel might be reluctant to be raised by her mother, when compared to the extravagance of her grandmother's character. But if the actress playing the mother is unobtrusive (which she is) and the role itself is not fleshed out or even very well written (which it isn't), we still must see some reason for the conflict of whether Laurel remain with her grandmother or go with her mother.
The symbolism of the chalk garden of the title is brushed on a bit heavy as well, with Kerr spelling it out in detail to Evans in the manner of her schoolteacher character from "The King and I" (but without the lovely score in support of her efforts), and for the purpose of the plot, it may seem appropriate that Kerr's end of the film decision is to remain with Evans, but to me it seems silly to tend a garden whose flower has already been grown and plucked.
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