Cinema: Mothertime

Our Mother's House is a modern Gothic tale of innocence and evil that takes place in a penumbral pile of Victorian architecture somewhere in a London suburb. In her darkened bedroom lies Mother, mortally ill, the heart and guiding hand of seven boys and girls ranging in age from three to 16. The film begins at "Mothertime," the family's daily sunset gathering around her big brass bed for Bible reading and counseling. As the children arrive, Mother dies.

Grief-stricken, uncomprehending, terrified of being sent to an orphanage, they decide to bury Mother in the garden and tell no one. "Everything will be just as it has always been," says Elsa, the oldest. Under her direction, they go to school as usual, do the housekeeping, and maintain a kind of brawling, sprawling discipline based on love for each other and fear of the perils outside the old stained-glass door. They are sustained, too, by a mother cult—complete with sepulchral candles and antiphonal responses—in which one sensitive girl plays Sibyl for her siblings, delivering utterances from Mother, "who is always with us."

Into this precarious and primitive world bursts Charlie Hook (Dirk Bogarde), Mother's former husband and therefore the children's putative parent. Charlie is the classic cad; he gulls the kids with razzle-dazzle and big talk, swindles them out of their savings, and fills their mother's house with booze and popsies. The climax comes when Charlie puts the house up for sale, profanes their devotions, and triumphantly vilifies mother.

The situation is ingenious—though the story is neither probable nor particularly suspenseful—and Dirk Bogarde, as the father, is competent in a stereotype part. But everything else about Our Mother's House is splendid. Producer-Director Jack Clayton (Room at the Top) keeps his camera close to his subjects, frequently narrowing the field of vision to a telling detail—a hand on a sleeve, a pouring pitcher, a pair of eyes—again and again creating the effect of a sequence of stunning stills that build and sustain the mood. The children, though, are Clayton's triumph. Each of them is such an accomplished scene stealer that it is hard to tell whether the director deserves more credit for evoking acting ability in his brood or for keeping it under control.