Shadows of Shadows: Techniques of Ambiguity in Three Film Adaptations of “The Turn of the Screw”: Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), Dan Curtis’s The Turn of the Screw (1974), and Antonio Aloy’s Presence of Mind (

Of all the tales of Henry James, none has been the subject of more adaptations into feature films or teleplays than what the author called his “sinister” little “excursion into chaos”, “The Turn of the Screw” (Literary CriticismII 1183-4). In the last half-century there have been nearly a dozen such adaptations in English, not to mention numerous foreign language films, several versions of Benjamin Britten’s own operatic adaptation, and scores of theatrical transpositions of the novella. Our ..