What are the prominent references to real death?
* The portrait of the monarch in the school room is changed because of the death of King George. This ‘Royal’ connection with death and succession was not emphasized in the North American version of the film, however. * Both girls faced death as small children, and apparently conquered it. And they have the scars to remember their battles. * Pauline falls off her bike in the “Donkey Serenade” scene and says: “I think … I’m … dying!” Juliet orders her: “Don’t!” * The Port Levy revelation happened “on the day of the death of Christ.” * Pauline declares, when she is threatened with separation from Juliet after Dr Bennett’s exam, that life without Deborah would be unbearable, and that “the thought of death is not fearsome.” * Pauline at last puts words to her growing black feelings in “the letter from old Stew” scene: “Suddenly, a means of ridding myself of this obstacle occurred to me. If she were to die…” * Finally, on the morning of the murder, Pauline wrote that she was “writing
