lasttimeisaw An elaborate UK period costume drama from Joseph Losey, the Palme d'Or winner of 1971 and scripted by Harold Pinter (their third collaboration after THE SERVANT 1963, 8/10 and ACCIDENT 1967), which also bookended the honeymoon period between them, from L.P. Hartley's eponymous novel which begins with "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there". The central narrative is set in 1900, a 12-soon-to-be-13Leo (Guard) stays as a guest with the wealthy family of his schoolmate Marcus (Gibson) in rural Norfolk during a torrid summer, and soon becomes a go-between and delivers letters between Marcus' upscale sister Marian (Christe) and her secret inamorato Ted Burgess (Bates), a tenant farmer. While the upper class splendor does open the eyes of Leo, who is from a not-so-noble family, he is more intrigued by Ted's unrefined masculinity, and constantly pesters him about the meaning of "spooning", also his fascination towards the gorgeous Marian retains him as the loyal messenger of their forbidden romance. Until he knows Marian will marry to Hugh Trimingham (Fox), a viscount returned from war, with a glaring scar on his face, a man whom he also respects, Leo wavers, and on the day of his 13th birthday, a tryst is about to be uncovered by Marian's stern mother (Leighton), and tragedy inevitably will separate the ill-fated lovers. The film impresses foremost with its stunning bucolic scenery, the alternately mellifluous and eerie sonic environment wondrously created by Michel Legrand's score. And it also takes an unconventional route to underpin the story's seemingly placid surface, exclusively through Leo's observation, to mask its choppy torrent underneath, how the class boundary is preached and the lives of nobility starts to crumble. Equally unusual is the unforeseen insertion of scenes where an agedLeo (Redgrave) revisit Marion - it does baffle audience who is alien with the source novel, but it also creates an air of mystery and an overpowering solemnity which is beguilingly arresting. The film is a four-times BAFTA winner (with 12 nominations in total) but only be able to generate one BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS nomination for Leighton (remember the great time when BAFTA doesn't condescend to a merely Oscar precursor?), who is menacingly persistent to disclose the scandal in the third act. Christie and Bates, barely sharing the same frame together (bar Ted's rendition when Marian comes to his succor as the musical company and their final tryst), yet both display their rough edges when facing Leo, their inhibited frustration finally finds an orifice on this wide-eyed outsider.Dominic Guard as the young Leo, is literally the eyes of the film, perpetually frowning, bemused by the adult world he is too eager to comprehend, authentically guarantees Leo's greenness tallies with the outfit Marian bought for him. Edward Fox and Michael Gough complement the outstanding cast with a touch of dignified distinction running in their veins.Truth to be told, THE GO-BETWEEN is neither an ode of genuine friendship, nor about a young boy's first crush, to me, Losey conceives this story as an innocence-lost process which every boy must undergo, a dispirited revelation of how adulthood is never as inspiring as he imagined. But overall, it occasionally tainted by the brunt of its narrative ellipsis, which would reach its detrimental apex in THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN (1975, 4/10).

Malcolm Parker When one hears the music from the Thomas Crown Affair, Summer of '42 and Yentl, its easy to understand why composer Michel Legrand has won three Oscars. I think for this film he had a really, really off-day. The strident piano music sounds like an attempt to harmonically illustrate the discord between the Leo's infatuation with the beautiful Marian, and the actuality of her coquettish behaviour. It's ridiculously unsubtle and becomes more and more tiresome as it repeats with almost every dramatic turn the film takes. The only other criticism is that some of flash forwards are very poorly lit and I can't see how this is for any particular dramatic effect. The cast is superb - Margaret Leighton well deserving her Oscar nomination, the dialogue is nicely balanced, the pace well-judged. Lovely film - really awful music.

jc-osms The source novel, (obviously inspired by Lawrence's more carnal "Lady Chatterley's Lover") I had read a year or so ago on holiday and thoroughly enjoyed so it was with much anticipation that I settled down at last to watch this celebrated adaptation by American exile Joseph Losey, with its top-notch British cast. I wasn't disappointed. To the best of my recollection, the film is very true to the novel, only slightly modifying the epilogue-type ending by introducing the years-later reunion of Marion and Leo in teasingly inserted sequences which initially might confuse the casual viewer. The main theme of the movie, to my mind is the corruption of innocence as the adults in the world of naive young outsider Leo, take advantage of his susceptibility and willingness to please, not to mention his pubescent fascination with physical love, to use him as an unwitting pawn in their adult games of deception and lust. Thus we learn at the conclusion that Leo has never married or, even, by inference, enjoyed any kind of natural relationship with a woman, thus is his trust and innocence abused for all time.The film of course also comments tellingly on snobbery, class division and heroism in between-the-wars England but in the end its most important facet is the interplay of the four main characters, Marion, Ted Burgess, Lord Trillingham and of course young Leo, as the film moves inexorably towards its predictably tragic ending. The acting is generally very good, especially the main female parts played by Julie Christie and Margaret Leighton as errant daughter and suspicious mother respectively. The male acting I was slightly less enamoured of, Alan Bates failing to me to really suggest the rough physicality which draws Marion away from the safe, arranged, matrimonial match offered by the affable jolly good chap, Lord Trillingham, well played by a young Edward Fox. The young actor playing Leo, acts his part very well although the scenes with his young school-friend, Marion's younger brother, are a bit strained and accordingly unconvincing. The direction I found largely well-paced, although one or two short interludes seemed unnecessary in the editing and occasionally the frightfully, frightfully accents of the cast grated somewhat. Harold Pinter's screenplay stays properly close to its source and is less noticeably Pinter-ian than I would have expected, not too many characteristic pregnant pauses or repetitions. The climax (sorry, no pun intended) in the barn was effectively led up to and delivered. I did however find the music by Michel Legrand lacked a little subtlety, out of kilter with the delicate emotions on display here and also lacking the required pastoral touch. On the whole though this was a rewarding and entrancing movie, as good a classic book adaptation as you could hope to see and probably a precursor of Merchant-Ivory's success later in the decade.

drschnitz-1 Easily one of the best acted, best directed and most intellectually intriguing films I have ever seen. Julie Christie is so lovely that you will never forget her. The screenplay by Pinter is impeccable, building a rhythmic alternation of times and places, an alternation that ultimately crashes together. I have seen this movie several times - like Casablanca, it just keeps getting better - and have taught it to inner-city pre-freshmen - they loved it. They were not at all used to films that try to be artistic creations, and the slowness of the pace at first threw them off. However, once we explored the multiple levels of meaning and revelation in each of the initial scenes, they became drawn into the film, caught up in its mystery and romance and fascinated by the vision of a totally alien, yet oddly familiar, world. Losey at his best is on a par with Renoir. Why isn't this film on DVD? Even the background music is really good.