Just perfect...

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Bette Davis (in thick eyebrows and speaking very precisely and condescendingly) plays a prim English governess who may or may not be responsible for the drowning death of a child left in her care. Oddly muffled, but absorbing, creepy and generally well-acted suspense-melodrama from Britain's Hammer Films. Crack screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, adapting Evelyn Piper's novel, includes a terrific role for precocious William Dix as the nanny's young nemesis, but the tools are not quite present in Piper's original material for Davis to let loose and make a grand show of it (she's "in character" throughout: tense, fake-polite and rather glum). Audiences in 1965 were probably hoping for a macabre camp-thriller, another entry in the "Baby Jane" subgenre of older actresses cast in psychological creep-outs, but the shocks are rather subdued. This restrained approach, however, works to the picture's advantage, as the scenario plays more effectively as a dark character portrait rather than as a screamer. Davis is backed by a solid supporting cast, including Pamela Franklin as an amusingly typical teenage girl who lives in the apartment upstairs, and many film-historians have now hailed the picture as one of the best Hammer productions from this era. **1/2 from ****

The story twists, acting, and direction make a difference in this superior entry among Hammer Studios' series of black & white psychological thrillers. Bette Davis plays the titular character, working for a family that includes an often absent father, Bill (James Villiers), an unstable mother, Virginia (Wendy Craig), and a bratty son, Joey (William Dix). Joey's spent some time away and is just now returning home. For whatever reason, he *really* doesn't like the nanny, and makes this quite clear. It's got something to do with the death of Joey's kid sister Susy (Angharad Aubrey).Hammer veteran Jimmy Sangster scripted, from the novel by Evelyn Piper, and also produced. Seth Holt directs with a sure hand. Davis does some wonderfully understated work, while young Dix delivers an engaging performance. As this story plays out and the revelations occur, one realizes that both the Nanny and Joey can be considered sympathetic characters. In fact, all of the characters command ones' attention, with Pamela Franklin doing well as a neighbour who becomes Joey's confidante. And Jill Bennett is superb as the weary Aunt Pen, who has to be careful not to exert herself or get excited due to a weak heart. Jack Watling, Maurice Denham, and Alfred Burke are excellent in support.Richard Rodney Bennett composed the affecting music score; Harry Waxman did the crisp b&w cinematography. The film is very well made and the story very well told.Eight out of 10.

Hammer Studios was a class act. They could make anything look good and had a way of putting together a film that had audience appeal and did it with the efficiency needed because of financial restraints. They seemed to match bigger studios and rarely made films that were completely bad or disappointing.The Nanny is no exception. The Studio managed to concoct a semi-effective Gothic thriller but this one is so laid back and restrained that it sometimes sputters and it becomes a bit of a bore. This combined with some confusing flashbacks and a very convoluted ending result in a rather pedestrian picture with few shocks and even fewer flamboyances. This was probably done for effect but ultimately unseats this from becoming a taut thriller and results in some interest but can't maintain its mood for the duration. All the performances are above expectations and Davis fans can marvel at her even handed approach but she never manages to escape or emerge from her one note portrayal of a not very interesting friend of the family.It's a good looking evenly paced, if forever slow, movie that is not bad but fails to make much of an impression considering some of the aberrant behavior and some eccentric takes on the upper middle class lives of these stiff and stifling Brits.

A creepy nanny and a precocious kid butt heads, while a mother seems to be heading for a nervous breakdown, and the father simply leaves town. Of course it's more than it seems; we meet the bratty boy being taken home from a sort of lock-up for troubled kids and the doctor is out on the porch saying stuff like "Darn, never did manage to cure that little blighter.". Mom has refused to go, dad's attitude (before dashing away) seems to be punish-punish-punish, and only Bette Davis, as the Nanny, seems nice. No she doesn't. She doesn't seem nice. There was something I didn't like about this smiling old girl right from the get-go, Pamela Franklin eyes--sorry, Bette Davis eyes--or no Bette Davis eyes.Speaking of Pamela Franklin, she's the one spot of good cheer in the film, playing the young upstairs neighbor to the little fellow brought home, and actually managing to have a few normal conversations with said terror-tyke, once they've met on the fire-escape of the building. These are the moments of calm, though the boy is always fast with a sassy remark. Yes, he's non-stop detestable. He's got nothing but horrid accusations against that poor nanny, and even before we get an idea of why he loathes the sweet cheery old helper of the household, he's razed the entire premises with nothing but antagonistic, vile behavior. No wonder they packed him off years ago. Mother constantly multi-tasking crying and headaches, with breaks only for zoning out in bed. Visiting auntie--somewhat cooler than the mother but slowed down by a bad heart--not quite able to soothe all the never-ending tension.Of course the power of Bette Davis is such that no matter how unrelentingly bratty and vile the kid is, the smiling persecuted Nanny is scarier. I didn't care how nice and tolerant she was being; it's Bette Davis, so that kid's onto something. And when the cracks start to appear in this Nanny's outer shell of humility, one wonders if her apron should be checked for knives or throwing-axes. Is any kid with an unreasonable fear of Bette Davis really so maladjusted?And we learn what happened to get the boy shooed off to a home for boys who elevate naughty to a fine art, all those years ago. And we find out why family pictures have a sweet little girl in the frame--but, funny, there's no little girl running around the house anywhere. And it all goes from unsettling to panic-inducing, before you can say poison, or smothering, or heart medicine, or head-pushed-under, or noose, or Boy who Cried Wolf, or not.Terrific film for those who like highly stressed-out households where murder accusations pile up faster than the wastebaskets, and there's an implicit guarantee that someone living there has a bullseye on his or her back. It seems like the sort of family where a band of sadists perpetrating a home-invasion one night might bust in there only to find that the inhabitants have all finished each other off before the invaders even got in...or if still alive, were so busy tearing pieces out of one another that the home-invaders felt ignored and sort of fifth-wheelish.I leave it to you to sample this nasty scrap of psychological horror, and find out if the nanny in question is a nice, loyal, cheery old soul harassed by a heinous little bugger of a child, or, well, kind of a bad nanny as nannies go. I confess she seemed like someone who could lose it and go ballistic at any moment, but it's Bette Davis, and strange thoughts can enter one's head in that case.Recommended to me by: Fangoria Magazine # 300, featuring a List of the "300 Best" Horror films (2011). Write-up on THE NANNY done by Michael Gingold/MG (fine pick for the List, MG, especially amongst the non-gory yet admirably distressing entries).