As Hollywood steps centre stage for tonight’s awards ceremony, let’s pause and contemplate the movie that that captured the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay sixty years ago.
The wonderful Internet Movie Database describes “The Seventh Veil” as a “Pygmalion story about a concert pianist and her cruel guardian” and a review goes on to provide further commentary:
As for Ann Todd, a pretty wooden doll, her performance can be judged by the awful scene at the beginning of the film where she is caned by the headmaster of the school…
Francesca retells the story of her life, from when at the age of fourteen, she was caned by her headmistress, to when she was sent to live with her “uncle” Nicholas, an abusive and domineering guardian who forced her to practice the piano for four or more hours a day.
Note to any Hollywood types who want to be walking up the red carpet twelve months’ hence: a few good canings seem to find favour with the academicians.
I remember James Mason as the wicked uncle as if it was yesterday, and yet it must have been decades ago that I saw that movie. It is intricately related to the whole spanking thing for me and makes me (and you) realize just how long this impulse has been simmering away! For some he was the ‘cruel Uncle’; for me he was just erotic!!