Then Annie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Penn and cinematographer Caparros use short dissolves to. Locked in a frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness since infancy, 7-year-old Helen Keller has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. Elliott’s Sullivan is determined to instill in Helen-deaf and blind since a fever in infancy-the gift of language, and Eisenberg’s Helen-once she is done testing the strange new person in her life-is hungry to learn. The film is a harrowing, painfully honest, sometimes violent journey, astonishingly acted and rendered.
The miracle worker film movie#
This remains a story of strong-willed people who won’t let circumstances limit what they can achieve. Most relevant reviews Miracle Worker, does what a movie should. All rights receivedThe Miracle Worker - Young Helen Keller, blind, deaf, and mute.
The miracle worker film license#
Thankfully, most of the key scenes and many of the lines remain from William Gibson’s original television-to-stage-to-film version, and with them linger the story’s knife-edged humor and heart-tugging drama. This film is under non-exclusive license from MVD Entertainment Group. Everyone seems more confident, agreeable and self-aware, and speaks in perfectly structured sentences that leave no nuance of characterization unarticulated. The Miracle Worker is a 1962 American biographical film about Anne Sullivan, blind tutor to Helen Keller, directed by Arthur Penn. Elliott’s Sullivan is less prickly than Bancroft’s, as are Helen’s parents, played by David Strathairn and Kate Greenhouse.
The miracle worker film series#
Eisenberg’s Helen is always dressed in crisp, clean clothes, unlike Duke’s, who-more realistically-was often covered in grime from her many falls and willful acts of demolition. The Miracle Worker is a 1979 American made-for-television biographical film based on the 1959 play of the same title by William Gibson, which originated as a 1957 broadcast of the television anthology series Playhouse 90.Gibsons original source material was The Story of My Life, the 1903 autobiography of Helen Keller.The play was adapted for the screen before, in 1962. Their work goes a long way toward legitimizing this project, which in many other ways has been too cleaned up by writers Monte Merrick and Marsha Norman (who gave the script a dialogue polish) and director Nadia Tass.Īs re-envisioned here, the tone is too soaked in sunlight and saturated with color, and too many rough edges have been knocked off the characters.
Now, Helen is portrayed by 8-year-old Hallie Kate Eisenberg, who has been unmissable lately in those voice-altered Pepsi commercials and such movies as “Bicentennial Man” and “Beautiful.”Įisenberg gives a fierce, committed performance, as does Alison Elliott (“Wings of the Dove”) as Sullivan. There’s also something to be said for trying to reach youngsters with new actors, from their own frame of reference, as a 1979 TV movie did by advancing Duke to the Sullivan role and bringing in Melissa Gilbert to play Helen.