The Secret Garden Film Essay

The children's performances are the biggest drawback to The Secret Garden as their earnestness occasionally gets in the way of the dramatic illusion.Perhaps as compensation, we have the brilliant performance of Maggie Smith.

The children's performances are the biggest drawback to The Secret Garden as their earnestness occasionally gets in the way of the dramatic illusion.Perhaps as compensation, we have the brilliant performance of Maggie Smith.

This film adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved novel -- a childhood classic -- has a broad appeal.

Neither talking down to children nor pandering to their parents, The Secret Garden functions something like a fairy tale in the way in which we all can latch onto different aspects of meaning during different stages of our lives and also in the way in which primordial and psychosexual concerns are made palpable in narratively distanced and socially acceptable terms.

She struggles to be part of the "in crowd" and the weird new feeling that boys ...

See full summary » I watched this on a whim, expecting it to be pretty bad. The acting isn't that great but the story itself was actually pretty okay.

Narratively, these rejuvenating images are set against images of an earthquake, the dank, repressive household, and the loneliness of people without love.

And Holland has maintained her interest in the dilemmas of childhood on the horns of adulthood.

In 19th-century India, little Mary Lennox is suddenly orphaned by cholera.

Her only living relative is her crook-backed uncle, Archibald Craven, so Mary is sent to live at his estate on the...

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