Benjamin Britten the apex of his reputation: it was almost universally hailed as a masterpiece." Shostakovich told Rostropovich that he believed it to be "the greatest work of the twentieth century". In 1967 the BBC commissioned Britten to write an opera specially for television. "Owen Wingrave" was based, like "The Turn of the Screw", on a ghost story by Henry James. By the 1960s Britten found composition much slower than in his prolific youth; he told the 28-year-old composer Nicholas Maw, "Get as much done now as you can, because it gets much, much more difficult as you grow older." He did
The Turn of the Screw (2009 film) Andy Cooper praised the "creepy atmosphere" and tension, but said that the film "[fell] short in the chills department" and "could have done with a few jolts of terror to breathe more life into it". The divergences from the original novella's plot were generally not well received. Tim Teeman, reviewing "The Turn of the Screw" for "The Times", felt the 1920s setting did not contribute to the story, as it was not properly developed. He compared the film to Sarah Waters's novel "The Little Stranger", a ghost story set in the 1920s in which the social upheavals of the decade