La mano sulla culla

Long before the acclaim of "L.A. Confidential", director Curtis Hansen offered up this trim, effectively manipulative and suspenseful film. Sciorra is a pregnant woman whose doctor (magnificently slimy de Lancie) molests her during an office visit. The ramifications of her subsequent charges bring about the entrance of De Mornay into her life. De Mornay poses as a nanny and almost immediately wreaks havoc on Sciorra's household, taking charge of it and manipulating the family, all while smiling pleasantly. The story is almost completely implausible and the credibility of the script is stretched further and further as it goes along. However, it matters not because of the sure-handed, inventive direction and the dedicated performance of De Mornay. Taking a cue from Hitchcock, much of the dirty business occurs in daylight among stark white walls and bright outdoor settings. De Mornay insinuates herself into the household and into the minds of the viewer with an unsettling and fascinating malevolence. No one is safe as she meticulously works her dread. Aside from her plots against Sciorra, her shocking behavior includes calling a mentally challenged man a 'retard' and saying the 'F' word to a grade school child. This decidedly un-PC approach is at compelling odds with Sciorra and her yuppie husband who both represent everything annoying and stereotypical about their type and status ('talking' to their kids, 'processing' everything psychologically, et al) They are well off and think they're 'on to' life, yet he's a dim bulb and she overreacts to everything possible. This makes a certain faction of the audience delight in seeing them tormented. Cutting a swath through all the bull is the stunning, fire-breathing, no-nonsense Moore as Sciorra's friend. This is one of the greatest supporting turns of the '90's. She owns every scene she's in, yet ultimately can't beat De Mornay, thus creating a terrific onscreen rivalry right from the start. Moore has never looked this wonderful again, nor essayed this brittle a role, but at least it exists as a monument to her talents at playing a ball-breaking bitch goddess. The excitement leading up to her confrontation with De Mornay is palpable (thanks in part to some great editing.) The male cast is weak. McCoy is often just plain bad and Hudson is embarrassing as a 'slow' handyman. Sciorra does well in a part that does her no favors. The film was a massive (surprise) hit, but she wasn't able to ride it to anything much afterwards. At least De Mornay was briefly lifted to a higher position in the film industry. Moore has fared the best. Zima (in her film debut!) is exceptionally cute as the daughter and does a great job. She later won a role on "The Nanny". The film inspired a raft of imitators featuring killer-sitters, killer-temps, etc... but none found the wide audience that this enjoyed. It's a credit to De Mornay (and Hanson) that despite being petite and feminine, she comes across as chilling and dangerously strong and violent.

Much like "Rear Window", this movie brings up a serious question: Whom can you trust? It all begins one day in Seattle, when Claire Bartel (Annabella Sciorra) goes to her gynecologist. She gets the feeling that he's merely fondling her. After she reports this, several other women say the same thing, prompting the gynecologist to commit suicide. Soon afterward, his widow (Rebecca DeMornay) goes into labor. But the baby dies. Now she has only one thing on her mind: revenge.

That's where the movie gets really creepy. Assuming the name Peyton Flanders, she goes to work as a nanny for the Bartels. In the process, she not begins to act as a mother for the new baby, but she gets into everyone's confidence. And if anyone distrusts her...well, let's just say that she's way ahead of them.

If "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" makes you suspicious of your friends, then it's probably doing it's job. Director Curtis Hanson brings the same kind of intensity that he brought to "LA Confidential" and "8 Mile". You may never feel the same after watching this movie.

This domestic thriller was a box-office hit despite its mid-level marquee pull and is entertaining and delivers plenty of suspense and shocks along the way. A vengeful widow who has lost her husband to a suicide and suffers a miscarriage plans to get even with the woman who caused the trouble by filing a sexual molestation suit against her husband. Rebecca de Mornay is the evil nanny who plots her revenge with relish, her satisfaction obvious as her plans begin to bear fruit. The nanny is not swayed by the innocence of the young girl or the newborn baby she is hired to care for and intends to destroy the entire family. Naturally, the parents are clueless as to what is going on until much later, while de Mornay methodically turns the household into her own domain, holding it in a grip of fear. Annabella Sciorra is the wife and mother who confronts de Mornay in the final moments. Graeme Revell contributes a nice music score.

You have to hand it to the makers of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE--once the story starts to unravel, you have to stay tuned to find out how this manipulative bitch will get her comeuppance. It's as simple as that. We know from the start that she has evil intentions, but we never know how evil they are until she starts a series of manipulative acts that demonstrate how cunning and remorseless she is.

REBECCA de MORNAY is so convincingly evil that you have to wonder why her career didn't skyrocket after this. It's a performance worthy of award consideration, but both she and the film itself have been largely forgotten. None of the supporting players, with the exception of JULIANNE MOORE, have become household names but they're all quite effective.

The ending may be somewhat predictable--and most welcome when it finally comes--but it's still stylishly done and a satisfying conclusion to a tale of household terror when a nanny's rage goes amok because of an incident in her past involving a woman whom she perceives as ruining her husband's life. Sure, it's been done before, but never quite so cunningly presented.

Sorry for the lousy pun but a nanny-themed movie starring Madeline Zima was asking for it, now, let the review start.

You have a good typical American Family made of a handsome blue-eyed scientist with a sexy beard, played by an actor whose fame didn't rise much since the film, a frail devoted asthmatic housewife who looks like the twin sister of Talia Shire with a nicer hairdo, played by Annabella Sciorra, and a smart little girl (Zima), that's for the initial picture, and this happy family is looking for a nanny to take care of their newborn son and brother, so that Claire (the wife) can take care of a greenhouse project. Kind of a boring premise ... but there's more spicy elements about this family, and it's all wrapped up in the first 15 minutes, like a script school-case.

During a visit, Claire was victim of sexual abuse from her gynecologist, she sued him, other mothers complained, he killed himself, his wife played by Rebecca De Mornay didn't inherit the money and what's more, she has a miscarriage in the process, and become permanently sterile. To call it a strike of 'bad luck' would be the understatement of the millennium. Still, in her bad luck, while watching the news, she could catch the name and face of that woman who was indirectly responsible for all the personal mayhem she went through. You gotta wonder what the TV and police were thinking. Anyway, now, guess who's gonna offer his services for the nanny job?

Good thriller always rely on simple concept. "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" is no exception, it was an unexpected hit in 1992, the same year of a similarly themed film "Single White Female". Both are based on the same "Stranger Within" concept, when the lives of an ordinary family or group of persons are affected by the entrance of a next- door stranger, and it is a source of heart-pounding psychological thrills that was made started with "Fatal Attraction" and "Misery". The "Stranger Within" thriller is almost a synonym of 'fatal attraction'... in fact, the film could have as a tag-line "Fatal Attraction with a Nanny", just like "Single White Female" was "Fatal Attraction with a Roommate".

So, there are reasons though why this film wasn't as memorable as the one with Glenn Close, the surprise effect asked for more tricks and it's likely that the ones used in the film never really catch the audience off guard. Rewatching the film myself after 15 years, I realized that the realism, as used in Curtis Hanson's film, was made of the self- canceling effect between things happening too conveniently well for the villainess for the first three quarters, and then for the good guys in the last one. The evolution of the narrative is so schematically well-oiled that even the greatest effects are still attenuated by their predictability. It wows at times but hardly with a major 'w'.

Just to give you an idea, my younger brother who has seen less movies than I (ten years younger) immediately guessed that the big black retarded guy (played by the only Ghostbuster whose name is hardly remembered) was gonna be the last-minute hero, needless to say that he harbored a triumphant smile when at the climax, the poor daddy broke his legs and was immediately disqualified from the final confrontation. Anyone could've guess that but he also predicted that the slutty evil baby sitter would frame him so that he can be expelled from the house, and that was impressive.

He still enjoyed the film and I still did, but it is true that, suspension of disbelief was too demanding. So many things go totally wrong as soon as Peyton, the baby sitter makes her entrance that it's a wonder how Claire can't reassemble the pieces of he puzzle. She wants to wear a sexy dress, but she finds a last-minute stain and then puts the something that looks like extracted from the wall cover of a grandma's house. But let's say she's naive and at least, the character of the friend Marlene, played by sexy Julianne Moore never really trusted Peyton, but then how about a missing application letter, how about the sudden change of behavior of her daughter. But let's just say that, given how these tricks work, and how efficient they are in their frustrating effects, I accept them for the sake of what I expect from a B-movie thriller.

Still, there are three things I can't really forgive and that could've been easily avoided, Peyton could have faked a resume, after all the troubles that affected Claire's family, they would take some precautions and not let any stranger entering their world, just like that. Secondly, I don't think a woman who didn't have a child, much more sterile, can breast-feed a baby, and last but not least, the depiction of asthma. Not only these wheezing noises were annoying because they were never matching Clair's chests' movements, but when you decide that your movie will have a main character suffering from asthma, is it too much asking some tutorial about the proper use of an inhaler. All she did was making a quick click, she never put the inhaler in her mouth and it didn't feel as if she was inhaling anything.

If you care for realism, the film might not be your cup of tea, but that's not a reason to dismiss it, "Fatal Attraction", as a milestone as it was (and it wasn't) had its more-or- less ridiculously unrealistic parts. So, Hanson's film is enjoyable for what it serves well, a solid villainous performance, and an eerie sometimes sexy atmosphere that creates a well-packaged average psychological thriller, that's all, but as far as realism is concerned, well, it's not a good sign when a film is an inspiration for these hilarious '100 THings I learned" threads ...