Plot
In 1900, twelve-year-old Leo Colston is invited to spend his summer holiday at Brandham Hall, the Norfolk country house of his wealthy school friend, Marcus Maudsley. Upon arriving at the house, the middle-class Leo finds himself out of place among the upper class; his hosts, particularly Marcus's older sister Marian, try to make him feel welcome. Leo soon develops a crush on the beautiful Marian, who dotes on the boy and buys him new clothes.
Marcus becomes ill with the measles and has to stay quarantined in his bedroom, leaving Leo to entertain himself. While exploring the estate grounds, Leo wanders to a nearby farm and injures himself playing in one of the haystacks. Tenant farmer Ted Burgess tends to Leo's injury, asking the boy if he can bring a letter to Marian for him in return. Leo agrees and after he gives Marian the letter, she begs him to take another letter back to Ted. Leo becomes the regular messenger between Marian and Ted, who are engaged in a clandestine affair. Leo remains innocent about the proceedings and believes he is merely carrying secret messages between friends.
Marian is not free to marry Ted, as she is being courted by Hugh, Viscount Trimingham, the estate heir whom her parents want her to marry. One day, Leo sneaks a look at one of the letters Marian has entrusted him with. Leo is shocked and upset when he realizes it is a love note. Marian's engagement to Hugh is announced and Leo is relieved, thinking this means his messenger duties will no longer be needed. Marian and Ted continue their affair and proceed to rely on Leo as a go-between, much to the boy's worry and confusion. When Leo declines to carry a letter for Marian, she scolds him. Leo writes to his mother asking if he can come home sooner than planned because he has overstayed his welcome; his mother responds that it would be rude to the Maudsleys if he left early.
The day of Leo's thirteenth birthday party is marked by a record heatwave. Tensions between Marian and Leo have subsided, and she asks the youth to deliver another letter to Ted for her. Leo refuses and the two playfully chase each other outside. Madeleine, Marian's mother, sees them and inquires what the fuss is about. She spots the letter, but Marian lies and says she is sending Leo to deliver a letter to her former nanny, which Leo goes along with. Madeleine, suspecting Marian's affair, goes to speak alone with Leo. She prods the boy to show her the letter, but he claims he has lost it.
During Leo's birthday dinner that evening, a thunderstorm breaks out. All of the Maudsley family members are at the dinner table to partake in the festivities, except for Marian. Though some family members insist on waiting for her, Madeleine loses her patience and goes to look for Marian herself, taking Leo along with her. She takes him to Ted's farm, where Marian and Ted are discovered having sex in the barn. The event has a long-lasting impact on Leo, as it is revealed that after he was caught with Marian, Ted shot and killed himself in his farmhouse kitchen.
Fifty years later, Leo has returned to Brandham Hall a jaded, disillusioned man. In the years since, he has shut down his imaginative and emotional nature, making him unable to establish intimate relationships. He meets with the elderly Marian, now the Dowager Lady Trimingham, who is living in her former nanny's cottage. Leo learns that Marian went on to marry Hugh as planned but bore Ted's son. Hugh eventually acknowledged Ted's son as his own, before dying in 1910. Marian's son in turn died in the Second World War. Marian has become estranged from her grandson because of the scandal of his parentage, so she has once again sent for Leo as a go-between to help repair their relationship and inform her grandson that she did truly love Ted. Leo leaves to embark on his final errand for Marian.
Production
Development
The rights to the novel had been in the hands of many producers, including Anthony Asquith. Then Sir Alexander Korda purchased it in 1956. He envisioned Alec Guinness and Margaret Leighton in the leads and employed Nancy Mitford to write a script. [9] [10] Hartley later said Korda had no intention to make a film of the book; he kept the rights hoping to re-sell them at a profit. Hartley says "I was so annoyed when I heard of this that I put a curse on him and he died, almost the next morning." [10]
Joseph Losey was interested in filming the novel. He tried to get financing for a version in 1963 after filming The Servant and said Pinter had written "two-thirds of a script, [10] [11] but could not find the money to make the film either then or at a second attempt in 1968. [9]
"The company had cold feet about the story", said Losey. "It was too tame for the pornographic age. As one man put it, who would be interested in a bit of Edwardian nostalgia? That's idiotic. It is certainly not a romantic or sentimental piece. It has a surface and a coating of romantic melodrama, but it has a bitter core." [9]
Losey said he was attracted to the novel because it was about "the terrible sense of shortness of any human life, the sense of totality of life." [12]
Pinter's screenplay for the film was his final collaboration with Losey, following The Servant (1963), and Accident (1967). [13] It is largely faithful to the novel, but it alludes to the novel's opening events in dialogue, in which Leo is admired by other boys at his school as they believe he used black magic to punish two bullies, and it moves events described in the novel's epilogue into the central narrative. [10]
Losey later said he was glad he and Pinter did not make the film until after Accident because that film to experiment with time in storytelling. [9]
Financing
Eventually John Heyman managed to get financing from EMI Films, where Bryan Forbes agreed to pay £75,000 for the script.
Because of the relatively steep budget, EMI had to seek co-production financing from MGM. Losey budgeted the film for $2.4 million but had to make it for $1.2 million; he did this by cutting the shooting schedule by a month and working for a percentage of the profits instead of a fee. [15] [9] [16]
In July 1970, MGM-EMI announced it would make the film as part of four co-productions; the others were Get Carter (1971), The Boy Friend (1971) and The Last Run (1971) directed by John Boorman. [17] Of these ideas, only the last was not made into a movie.
Filming
Filming started in August 1970. [18] The film was shot at Melton Constable Hall, Heydon and Norwich in Norfolk. [19] Filming was completed that November. [20]
Pinter was on set during filming. [10] Losey said the making of the film was one of the happier in his career. [9] Dominic Guard struggled with a stammer that made his delivering his lines impossible at times and that caused him to develop nervous tics. Losey dealt with this problem by coaching Guard and telling him he had faith in him, but in "a rather brutal way" by telling him to stop whenever Guard was using a tic or stammer. [21]
Release
The film was first shown in May 1971 at the Cannes Film Festival, and it won the Grand Prix International du Festival. [26] A few days before, James Aubrey, head of MGM, disliked the final film and regarded it a flop.
The film was released in the UK on 24 September 1971, opening at ABC1 on Shaftesbury Avenue in London. [28] A month later, on 29 October, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother arrived at the ABC Cinema on Prince of Wales Road in Norwich to attend the local premiere, thus giving Norwich its first royal premiere. [29]
EMI sold this movie and Tales of Beatrix Potter to China for release at $16,000 each. They were the first western films to be released in China for two decades. [31]
The inaugural screening of a new restoration of the film released by StudioCanal UK took place at Cinema City, Norwich on 11 September 2019.
Box office
By August 1971, Nat Cohen stated the film had already been "contracted" for $1 million. [32] The film was one of the most popular movies of 1972 at the British box office. [33] By September 1972, James Aubrey of MGM said the film lost Columbia $200,000, but he insisted that selling the film had been the right move. [34] In 1973 Losey said the film was still not in profit. [35]
According to a biography of Losey, after 18 months of release, the net takings in the UK were £232,249. At 1 July 1972, Columbia's territories had earned $2,198,382, including $1,581,972 in the U.S. and Canada. Ten years after its premiere. the film had earned £290,888 from UK cinemas and TV, £204,566 from overseas sales (excluding the U.S.), £96,599 from the British Film Fund, and Columbia's gross receipts in the U.S., Canada and France were £1,375,300. Losey's personal percentage of film's box office was £39,355. So in the end, the film was quite profitable.
In 1994 Forbes claimed the film had made a profit. [36]
Critical reception
In The New York Times , Vincent Canby described the film as "one of the loveliest, and one of the most perfectly formed, set and acted films we're likely to see this year". [37] Roger Ebert awarded the film 3 and ½ stars out of 4, praising the production detail and Losey and Pinter's attention to the "small nuances of class". [38] Ebert did criticize the film's use of flashforwards near the end, expressing that they prematurely give away the ending. [38] In The Village Voice , Andrew Sarris praised the film's cast, period detail, and camera work. [39] However, Sarris also found issue with the film's incorporation of flashforward scenes, which he said made for a jarring, unnecessarily convoluted narrative. [39] He further expressed that some crucial details from Hartley's book are lost in the transition to the screen. [39]
The Go-Between is a novel by L. P. Hartley published in 1953. His best-known work, it has been adapted several times for stage and screen. The book gives a critical view of society at the end of the Victorian era through the eyes of a naïve schoolboy outsider.
Harold Pinter was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993) and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works.
Joseph Walton Losey III was an American theatre and film director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Wisconsin, he studied in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States. Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, he moved to Europe where he made the remainder of his films, mostly in the United Kingdom. Among the most critically and commercially successful were the films with screenplays by Harold Pinter: The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971).
Accident is a 1967 British drama film directed by Joseph Losey. Written by Harold Pinter, it is an adaptation of the 1965 novel Accident by Nicholas Mosley. It is the third of four Losey–Pinter collaborations; the others being The Servant (1963), Modesty Blaise (1966) and The Go-Between (1971). At the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, Accident won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury award. It also won the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.
The Servant is a 1963 British drama film directed by Joseph Losey. It was written by Harold Pinter, who adapted Robin Maugham's 1948 novella of the same name. The film stars Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig and James Fox.
M is a 1951 American film noir directed by Joseph Losey. It is a remake of Fritz Lang's 1931 German film of the same title about a child murderer. This version shifts the location of action from Berlin to Los Angeles and changes the killer's name from Hans Beckert to Martin W. Harrow. Both versions of M were produced by Seymour Nebenzal, whose son, Harold, was associate producer of the 1951 version.
Leslie Poles Hartley was an English novelist and short story writer. Although his first fiction was published in 1924, his best-known works are the Eustace and Hilda trilogy (1944–1947) and The Go-Between (1953). The latter was made into a film in 1971, as was his 1957 novel The Hireling in 1973.
Canal+ Image International was a British-French film, television, animation studio and distributor. A former subsidiary of the EMI conglomerate, the corporate name was not used throughout the entire period of EMI's involvement in the film industry, from 1969 to 1986, but the company's brief connection with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Anglo-EMI, the division under Nat Cohen, and the later company as part of the Thorn EMI conglomerate are outlined here.
Nat Cohen was a British film producer and executive. For over four decades he was one of the most significant figures in the British film industry, particularly in his capacity as head of Anglo-Amalgamated and EMI Films; he helped finance the first Carry On movies and early work of filmmakers such as Ken Loach, John Schlesinger, Alan Parker and David Puttnam. In the early 1970s while head of EMI Films he was called the most powerful man in the British film industry. He's been called "an unsung giant of British film who never got his due from the establishment in part because of anti-Semitism... the ability to be a successful studio head is very rare and most only last a few years. Cohen did it successfully at various companies for over two decades."
Reginald Mills was a British film editor and one-time film director with more than thirty feature film credits. Among his prominent films are The Red Shoes (1948), for which he received his only Academy Award nomination, The Servant (1963), and Romeo and Juliet (1968).
Modesty Blaise is a 1966 British spy-fi comedy film directed by Joseph Losey, produced by Joseph Janni, and loosely based on the popular comic strip Modesty Blaise by Peter O'Donnell, who co-wrote the original story upon which Evan Jones and Harold Pinter based their screenplay. It stars Monica Vitti as "Modesty", opposite Terence Stamp as Willie Garvin and Dirk Bogarde as her nemesis Gabriel. The cast also includes Harry Andrews, Michael Craig, Alexander Knox, Rossella Falk, Clive Revill, and Tina Aumont. The film's music was composed by Johnny Dankworth and the theme song, Modesty, sung by pop duo David and Jonathan. It was Vitti's first English-speaking role.
The Raging Moon is a 1971 British romantic drama film starring Malcolm McDowell and Nanette Newman and based on the book by British novelist Peter Marshall. Adapted and directed by Bryan Forbes, this "romance in wheelchairs" was considered unusual in its time owing in part to the sexual nature of the relationship between McDowell and Newman, who play disabled people. The film received two Golden Globe nominations, for Best Foreign Film, and Best Song for "Long Ago Tomorrow".
The Birthday Party is a 1968 British drama neo noir directed by William Friedkin and starring Robert Shaw. It is based on the 1957 play The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. The screenplay for the film was written by Pinter as well. The film, and the play, are considered examples of "comedy of menace", a genre associated with Pinter.
A Doll's House is a 1973 drama film directed by Joseph Losey, based on the 1879 play A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. It stars Jane Fonda in the role of Nora Helmer and David Warner as her domineering husband, Torvald.
The Assassination of Trotsky is a 1972 British historical drama film directed by Joseph Losey with a screenplay by Nicholas Mosley. It stars Richard Burton, Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.
The Damned is a 1962 British science fiction horror film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Macdonald Carey, Shirley Anne Field, Viveca Lindfors and Oliver Reed. The screenplay was by Evan Jones, based on H. L. Lawrence's 1960 novel The Children of Light. It was a Hammer Film production.
Galileo is a 1975 British biographical film directed by Joseph Losey, about the 16th- and 17th-century scientist Galileo Galilei, whose astronomical observations with the newly invented telescope led to a profound conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. The film stars an ensemble cast, led by Topol, Georgia Brown, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, and Margaret Leighton.
The Dreaming Child is a screenplay by Harold Pinter (1930–2008), the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, which he completed in 1997 and published in volume 3 of his Collected Screenplays (2000). It has not yet been filmed but was produced as a radio play by Feelgood Films for BBC Radio Four's Unmade Movies series in 2015. It is an adaptation of the short story "The Dreaming Child" by Danish author Karen Blixen. Pinter's manuscripts for this work are housed in The Harold Pinter Archive in the British Library.
Reginald Beck was a British film editor with forty-nine credits from 1932 to 1985. He is noted primarily for films done with Laurence Olivier in the 1940s and with Joseph Losey in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Go-Between is a 2015 British romantic drama television film directed by Pete Travis and written by Adrian Hodges, based on the 1953 novel of the same name by L. P. Hartley. The film stars Vanessa Redgrave, Jim Broadbent, Joanna Vanderham, and Jack Hollington, and aired on BBC One on 20 September 2015. It was filmed at Englefield House in Berkshire.
