Great child performances

My recent post about the eulogy delivered by Justice Janice Rogers Brown and the news of the death of Anne Bancroft (with reminiscences about her performance in The Miracle Worker) has got me thinking -- by a series of associations -- about some of the great child performances in the history of cinema. Here are my candidates:

*Mary Badham as Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. All of the children in this movie are wonderful, but Mary Badham's performance is exceptional. I remember how much she is able to convey simply through facial expressions, especially in that transcendent moment of recognition before she says "Hey, Boo!" in one of the film's final scenes. Or I remember her unabashed neighborliness toward Mr. Cunningham in the scene with the lynch mob in front of the jailhouse, and her belated embarrassment at having made everyone uncomfortable (for reasons she doesn't quite understand). Badham's portrayal manages to suggest the way that Scout is exquisitely poised between innocence and experience, between a childlike misapprehension of adults and adult motives that takes for granted the ideals that adults have held up for her and a dawning understanding of the myriad wretched ways in which adults fail to live up to those ideals and of the price paid by those who do (Atticus, Tom Robinson, Arthur Radley). I think this is one of the great performances ever captured on film -- not just one of the great child performances.

*Patty Duke as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. This is a very difficult role for a child, and Duke pulls it off beautifully. She makes the audience believe in Helen's predicament -- that there is a superior intellect imprisoned by near-insurmountable physical limitations. Again, I think of particular moments -- and the supreme moment for Duke's performance in this film is, of course, the scene at the water pump, where Helen breaks free for the first time. I can't watch it without sobbing.

*Anton Glanzelius as Ingemar in My Life as a Dog. Some have criticized this film as sentimental, but I think Glaznelius' performance as Ingemar is relentlessly unsentimental -- about childhood and about how children respond to grief and loss -- and that's what gives the performance its uncanny power.

*Jean-Pierre Leaud as Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows. Leaud, as Truffaut's cinematic alter ego, magnificently evokes the desolation, the numbness, and the ineffable yearning of Doinel's "delinquent" childhood. The final freeze frame is alone worth the price of admission.

*Martin Stevens as "little Miles" and Pamela Franklin as Flora in The Innocents. These performances are absolutely chilling and ultimately, especially in the case of Stevens' portrayal of Miles, heartbreaking. Since this story is almost meta-ambiguous, and since ambiguity is very difficult for children to play convincingly, Stevens' and Franklin's performances are especially impressive. As strong as the children's overall performances are, however, the success of the film rests, in large part, on Stevens' ability to pull off the final scene, and, man, does he ever. The children's performances, and Deborah Kerr's excellent turn as the governess, make this one of the most disturbing "ghost movies" ever made

*Elizabeth Taylor as Velvet Brown in National Velvet. I had never seen this movie until I watched it with my daughter about a year ago. It's a gentle, beautiful film, and Taylor gives one of those performances that seems to exist on a slightly different plane from the movie itself; it's the kind of performance that makes me cry at odd moments, though there's nothing sad about the story, and the only way I can explain my reaction is by attributing it to some cinematic variant of Stendhal's syndrome -- I'm overcome by the overabundance of beauty in Taylor's performance. It's a long, rocky road from Velvet Brown through Maggie the Cat to "Hey, Swampy!"

*Judy Garland. The Wizard of Oz. 'Nuff said.

Any other suggestions?