Todas as Noites às Nove

I was actually an extra in this film, as the school scenes were filmed at my junior school, St Leonards Church of England School in Chelsham, Surrey. I remember having to wear my best school uniform and do as I was told. I was 8 years old, I suppose, and it was all very exciting with the lights and the trailers and all the people buzzing around. I don't remember whether we were allowed to meet the stars; I somehow doubt it!

This is a great film, very atmospheric, very spooky, and totally believable - kids in the 1960s were obviously very resourceful (and full of very odd ideas). Needless to say, I wasn't allowed to watch the film until I was much older than when I was in it.

The reason few have heard of this film is because it is impossible to categorise. Made a few years after the same director made The Innocents and with much of the same sense of mystery and wonder but also the same fear of discovering just too much underneath. The swinging sixties seem a long way off in this almost Dickensian comic tragedy and much of the action seems to evoke the 50s and all those pre war skeletons tumbling out of creaking closets. Hints of incest and worse are probably the main reasons that this has all but disappeared but its a shame because all the children perform remarkably, as do Dirk Bogarde and Yootha Joyce. Immaculate direction, fine music and a wonderful script.

OUR MOTHER'S HOUSE is one weird psychological ride. Here we have a family living in a gloomy Victorian house with a reclusive, Bible-thumping invalid mother--surely fertile ground for insanity or incest or both. However, what we have is a painful portrait of adolescence in the older children and the horrors of navigating through an adult world. Left to their own devices after the mother's untimely death, the children do their best to survive, being molded by the mother's unstable religious ramblings. However, things take a turn for the worst when the absentee father arrives, shattering some illusions crucial to the little family's identity. . .

I've never seen anything like this film(the recent film THE CEMENT GARDEN comes to mind, but that film takes an entirely different direction with an incest theme), one in which children literally elevate their mother to the status of religious icon. This situation is simultaneously chilling and pathetic. This one is for people who enjoy character-driven psychological dramas.

I saw this about 14 years ago in a stroke of luck ( a local TV station had picked up a print, and my mother, suspense thriller buff that she is, decided to tape it), and the film has stuck with me ever since. It's not your typical horror film, and has more of a tragic element which was so very common to films of the genre in this particular era. The dark and dirty imagery only serves to enhance the premise, and the shrine the Hook children build to their mother is downright creepy. The children do a very decent job of portraying children ( something that is increasingly rare these days) and Dirk Bogarde does a fantastic job of portraying their scumbag father. And to boot, we've got a heavy incest theme going on. If you can get a hold of this one, go for it: it's very much of its time, but the opportunity is well worth any trouble.

At the beginning of the sixties ,Jack Clayton made a fine adaptation of "the turn of the screw",called "the innocents" which featured P.Franklin too.This could be called "more innocents "but there's a strong difference between the two works.Although "our mother's house" verges on fantastic,there's nothing irrational,nothing supernatural here.THat's what we can call a miracle of a movie:because it sounds like a horror and fantasy movie without all the genre gimmicks .So people who're looking for gore,special effects and other paraphernalia,please pass by.If you enjoy strong screenplays,first-class performances and masterful direction,this is a must.

Eight children whose mother's just passed away want to go on with their life as if nothing happened.Besides ,they do believe that their mother is still with them,and Pamela Franklin 's rendering is absolutely stunning when she acts as some kind of medium:far from the usual clichés -as you can see in "ghost" for instance-,she will give you goose pimples.This mother will remain a mystery,maybe a saint steeped in piety,maybe somebody much worse than a goody-two-shoes,as Charlie eventually claims.

Charlie is masterfully portrayed by Dirk Bogarde who was in his more fruitful period with such masterpieces as "accident" "king and country" "la caduti dei degi" "morte a Venezio".He keeps people waiting for he only appears after about forty minutes.But when he's on the screen ,the chemistry between the thespian and the children is so obvious that there's no hiatus.At first sight,he resembles some adult Peter Pan (hairdo,swagger,clothes,not to forget the name:Hook!).Here ,where Spielberg dismally failed when he made "Hook" ,Jack Clayton with a much smaller budget had already succeeded in portraying an adult/child, more than twenty years before.But further acquaintance will show that an adult can no longer remain a child .When Charlie is a man again,tragedy is waiting around the corner.

"Our mother's house" is so rich a movie that you could stay all night talking about it:a twilight glow shines on an autumnal suburb and turns into absolute darkness for the last sequence.Georges Delerue's score is simply marvelous and enhances the perfection of the pictures.

A strong influence on the French movie "la fracture du myocarde".

See it at any cost.