The Chalk Garden

“A girl on the verge of womanhood... a woman on the edge of loneliness... both suspicious of affection, yet starved for love.”

Nobody can say where Miss Madrigal (Deborah Kerr) has been, and her references are too thin for anyone to check. Mrs. St. Maugham (Edith Evans) hires her anyway, to take charge of Laurel (Hayley Mills), her troubled teenage granddaughter, in a house on the East Sussex cliffs where the chalk garden has failed. Ronald Neame sets the two of them against each other, the governess watchful and the girl restless, and the wary closeness between them is what the film tends.