as Miss Giddens, a repressed spinster who takes a job in a large, remote English country house; there working as the governess to an orphaned brother and sister, Giddens gradually comes to believe that her young charges are possessed by evil spirits. The film has consistently received high praise on many counts – Kerr's superb performance, which is often rated as one of the best of her career; the powerfully unsettling performances of the two juvenile leads, Martin Stephens (Miles) and Pamela Franklin (Flora); the eerie score by the French composer Georges Auric; and especially the lush black-and-white widescreen cinematography of Freddie Francis. Although Clayton was initially dismayed at Fox's insistence that the film be shot in CinemaScope (a format he greatly disliked) Francis was able to use it to great advantage, carefully framing each scene, and using innovative techniques, such as placing protagonists at the extreme opposite edges of the screen during dialogue scenes, or focusing on the central region while using specially-made filters to blur the edges of the frame, creating a subtle but disturbing sense of unease in the viewer. Capote's screenplay (with uncredited contributions from John Mortimer) was mainly adapted from William Archibald's stage version of the story. Although it was not a major commercial hit, it earned strongly positive reviews on release and its reputation has grown steadily over the years. Pauline Kael praised it as "one of the most elegantly beautiful ghost movies ever made", and on its release, Daily Express reviewer Leonard Mosley raved: "It is at least 20 years since I sat in a cinema and felt the skin crawling on the back of my head through sheer nervous tension, but I felt that creepy sensation once more this week. I was terrified by a film in which no blood is visibly shed and no graves are dug up." Both Francis and Capote subsequently rated their work on the film as the best of their respective screen careers, and it has been widely acclaimed as a classic of psychological horror by many leading directors. François Truffaut, on spotting Clayton in a restaurant, sent him a note, scribbled on a napkin, which read, "The Innocents is the best English film after Hitchcock goes to America." The Pumpkin Eater (1964) The Pumpkin Eater (1964) featured a screenplay by leading British dramatist Harold Pinter, adapted from the novel by Penelope Mortimer, and cinematography by Clayton's