 | This is the classic story of the deaf and blind Helen Keller (Patty Duke) and her teacher, Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft). Pitied for her handicaps and thought to be retarded, Helen has been indulged and left in ignorance, resulting in a spoiled child without any concept of language. Annie, herself raised in a home for blind and deaf children, must be a ruthless taskmaster in order to use the child's physical needs as a primer from which to teach her what language is so that Helen's sense of isolation, confusion, and alienation from the world might end. The job will not be easy, if even possible; Annie struggles constantly with despairing thoughts of impotence and futility over not knowing to how reach Helen... but she is determined to not quit and abandon the girl to the hellish life that she has known all too well.
Bancroft and Duke carry this film on their shoulders and they do a magnificent job. They share many intense, physically exhausting scenes together. The sequence in which Annie grapples with Helen over dinner in order to teach her to follow basic rules of etiquette is a good example; it is unsentimental and the actresses are totally committed to their performances. Director Arthur Penn and screenwriter William Gibson (who adapted his own stage play) have done remarkable jobs as well to produce an uplifting, inspirational film that eschews saccharine and phoniness.
(revised after David Bonesteel)
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