The Secret Garden ** (1993, Kate Maberly, Maggie Smith, Haydon Prowse, John Lynch, Andrew Knott, Irène Jacob) – Classic Movie Review 5188

Director Agnieszka Holland’s 1993 film version of the 1911 Frances Hodgson Burnett children’s story is picturesque and meticulous, but dramatically indolent. Burnett’s story was previously filmed in 1919, 1949 and for TV in 1987.

Kate Maberly stars as the spunky little British girl Mary Lennox, who is orphaned in India by a photogenic earthquake and transplanted to Victorian Yorkshire to live with her morose, much absent uncle, Lord Archibald Craven (John Lynch).

Naturally, Maggie Smith livens the movie up a fair old bit as Mrs Medlock, a strict Mrs Danvers-style housekeeper looking after the girl and the uncle’s sickly son Colin Craven (Haydon Prowse), who is confined to bed and a wheelchair.

However, neglected, the girl has other ideas than being under the iron rule of Mrs Medlock, and a bird leads her to a locked secret garden that she brings back to life amid an awful lot of soppiness and sentimentality. Surely today’s youngsters aren’t going to swallow this kind of thing? The film proves a big disappointment from Holland after her rigorous films Europa Europa (1990) and Olivier, Olivier (1992).

Also in the cast are Andrew Knott, Irène Jacob, Laura Crossley, Walter Sparrow, Frank Baker, Valerie Hill, Andrew Pickering, Peter Moreton, Arthur Spreckley, Colin Bruce, Parsan Singh, Eileen Page, David Stoll, Tabatah Allen.

It is produced by American Zoetrope and distributed by Warner Bros. It is written by Caroline Thompson, shot by Roger Deakins and Jerzy Zielinski, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Fuchs, Fred Roos and Tom Luddy, scored by Zbigniew Preisner and designed by Stuart Craig.

Sequel: Back to the Secret Garden (2000).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5188

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