Harold Pinter and John Mortimer also worked on the screenplay. The former advised Jack Clayton that he should not use flashbacks, and the latter was brought in to "Victorianize" the script.
Deborah Kerr always regarded this as her finest performance.
Jack Clayton didn't want the children to be exposed to the darker themes of the story, so they never saw the screenplay in its entirety. The children were given their pages the day before they were to be filmed.
Jack Clayton was at great pains to distance his film from the Hammer horror movies which were enjoying great success at the same time.
Jack Clayton was dismayed to learn that 20th Century Fox insisted on making the film in CinemaScope. His cinematographer Freddie Francis set about making that less of a problem by framing the wide horizontal frame with lots of vertical lines to break it up. Conversely, he also used the wide space to emphasize shadowy spaces and using the emptiness towards an unsettling effect. To that end, he would often place characters at opposite ends of the frame.
Freddie Francis used so many lights that he was jokingly accused of trying to burn down Shepperton Studios.
François Truffaut regarded this as the best British film since Alfred Hitchcock had left for America.
Kate Bush was inspired by the film to pen the song "The Infant Kiss" which appears on her 1980 album "Never For Ever".
20th Century Fox executives were highly nervous about the admittedly unsettling scene where the governess kisses the boy Miles directly on his lips.
At one point when Deborah Kerr's character wanders around the house at night with only a candelabra for illumination, you might think you see something in the corner of your eye. You do. It's the clapperboard which had briefly wandered into shot. Jack Clayton decided to keep it in because he liked the idea of something almost subliminal being present to add to the air of unease.
Average Shot Length = ~9.2 seconds. Median Shot Length = ~8.6 seconds.
During the cursed video in The Ring, about 25 seconds in, a young boy's muffled singing can faintly be heard. This audio track is taken from The Innocents.
In an article in USA Today (August 22, 2011), Guillermo del Toro chose this as one of his six favorite "fright flicks."
Much of the screenplay is not actually derived from Henry James's novella "The Turn of the Screw" but from William Archibald's 1950 Broadway adaptation "The Innocents".
Quint's unworldly appearance at the window was achieved by putting actor Peter Wyngarde on a trolley and wheeling him up to and then away from the window.
The film opens with a creepy song written by Paul Dehn and Georges Auric sung over a black screen for about 45 seconds before the 20th Century Fox logo appears. In some cinemas, the projectionists assumed this was a mistake on the print and edited the film so it began with the appearance of the Fox logo.
There is reference to a "Reverend Fennell". Albert Fennell was the film's executive producer.
To create such sharp visuals, director of photography Freddie Francis used lots of huge bright lamps. Deborah Kerr sometimes had to resort to wearing sunglasses between takes.
When the governess first arrives at the house, it's a bright, sunny day. In fact, Freddie Francis had had some of the trees painted lighter to exaggerate this.