This exquisitely made film is a Victorian genre painting come to life.Mary Lennox is Thomas Cooper Gotch's "The child enthroned".The late 19th century middle and upper classes were obsessed by the idea of children and childhood,a preoccupation encouraged by the high infant/mother mortality rate due to paucity of medical knowledge and the lack of what today would be considered even the most basic hygienic practices. Despite the Industrial Revolution and the consequent leaps and bounds of technological progress childbirth and womens' health was very much a side issue in a patriarchal society.Colin's father has no interest in his son's upbringing despite - or,arguably,because of the fact that his wife,whom he clearly loved had died giving birth to the boy.He is an intelligent man and knows that such an attitude is not reasonable,but it is the status quo for a man of his position .That he loves and understands children is made clear by his attitude towards Mary and his defence of her against Mrs Medlock,but his gender and his own upbringing are not easy forces for him to overcome. And Mary is not an immediately attractive child.Orphaned by an earthquake in India,she is sent to England,where she has never been,to live with her uncle,bereaved husband of her dead mother's late sister. So spoilt and mollycoddled that she is unable even to dress herself,she soon comes into conflict with her cousin's governess/nurse/minder Mrs Medlock,and her cousin himself,an apparently sickly boy,bedridden,self-pitying and petulant.How she changes the lives of the boy,her uncle and Mrs Medlock is told in "The Secret Garden". It is a film made with loving care and attention.Every set-up is beautifully composed,perfectly colour-balanced and lit . The shot where Mary looks longingly out of the window is stolen from Sophie Anderson's "No Walk Today" and that is not meant as a criticism. The secret garden itself could have been painted by Helen Allingham. The long lingering close-ups of Mary's face,her eyes and hair superbly lit,recollect the almost mythologising aspect of Victorian child portraiture.Perhaps it takes a European director to reveal the potential for real beauty in the long hallways,sweeping staircases and secret passages in an English manor house.British filmmakers are often too concerned with post-colonial guilt and wracked with naive ideas of class conflict to give a balanced picture of life in Victorian England. The fact that Dickon is very much a village boy and several social strata below Mary and Colin is never referred to in the film. Instead he is depicted as a child of nature,almost a gypsy,born to country ways and in almost Buddhist-like commune with wild animals. The last scene,a tremendous long shot where he rides off over the moors on his white horse has a fine mythic echo to it. It would take a colder heart than mine to turn aside from the redemption through innocence proposition that is at the centre of "The Secret Garden"