Year of Release: 1965Country of Origin: UK
Director: Seth Holt
Cast: Bette Davis, Wendy Craig, Jill Bennett, William Dix
Plot outline: A disturbed young man, Joey, tries to prove his nanny is out to kill him (IMDb).
The Nanny is a rather quiet, cautious thriller that gives Bette Davis more room for characterization than most of her later movies. She does a marvelous job of keeping her psycho nature under control for the movie's first half. As a "barmy" governess hiding several dark secrets, she starts out with a benign expression under incredibly silly beetle brows, with subtle, sinister flashes of malignancy underneath her severe composure. Director Seth Holt lights her harshly, and lingers over the interesting, very British faces of the rest of the cast, especially William Dix's Joey. Holt creates an atmosphere of gray ominousness and is content to let his measured compositions build atmosphere, but when the plot revelations start, the movie's careful psychological detail is abandoned for melodrama, and Davis is filmed like a ghoul (or "Boris Karloff in skirts," as she once laughingly described herself in this period). The last scene is perfunctory and unbelievable, but the movie is worth seeing for its tense first half, and for Davis' carefully controlled performance of joyless, sometimes sadistic servitude. (DC, DS)
My judgement: **1/2 out of 4 stars
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