 |
Deaf Major 
|
|
|
TITLE |
Amy
(1981) (TV Film) |
|
DIRECTOR |
Vincent
McEveety
|
|
NOTES |
In In the
early part of this century a woman leaves her husband and works in a
school for the disabled.
Amy goes to work with blind and deaf children in a school
where the two rarely mix. She is there as a speech teacher
because as we soon learn none of the deaf children speak at
all. In fact some teachers and the committee which runs the
school don't think such children can speak.
The tone of the film is coy and sentimental from the opening
music but there's enough going on to make this film worth
seeing.
We see very little of the blind except for one little lad who
believes all blind children will open their eyes as they grow up, just
as some young animals are born blind and later open
their eyes. Of course this nice little story is contradicted by all
the older blind children around him. But his fate is never to
know the truth since he dies from rheumatic fever before he's
five years old.
The speech teacher wants to teach the deaf children to lip-
read as well as speak and a good portion of the film is spent
in the classroom.
The school which exists on poor funding cannot afford a
doctor but when a child is ill (it turns out from eating green
apples) the new teacher fetches a doctor. There is no
mention of fees and in fact the doctor can't keep away but this is
because he is the romantic interest. Barry Newman plays the doctor as
a comic Irishman turning up on the first
occasion drunk. For me he spoils the tone of the film and
clashes with the sensitive, fragile Agutter.
We're also side tracked by the husband of the teacher
searching for his wife which concludes predictably. And we
also discover that the teacher had a son who was deaf and
also had a heart defect which killed him when he was only a
few years old. Though before his death she had been taking
him to a special school and working there as a voluntary assistant.
A lot is unsatisfactory about this film but most of the action does
take place in the school.
|
|
Notes
|
|
