The Go-Between

The period piece films of Ivory-Merchant have nothing on Joseph Losey's The Go Between. In fact I'm sure that James Ivory and Ismail Merchant more than likely modeled their own films on the ambience of Victorian England that Losey gave to this fine production.

Young Domenic Guard is invited to spend his summer with his school chum Richard Gibson's family in their country home. The Maudsleys live in grand style and Gibson's parents are Michael Gough and Margaret Leighton. When Gibson comes down with the measles, the hospitality slack is taken up with his older sister Julie Christie. She's engaged to Edward Fox cricketeer and Boer War hero. They all make Guard feel quite welcome and he has the run of the place.

The Go Between is set in those more strict and innocent times and it could never work today. But given the lavishness of the sets and costumes you really do feel you're back in the post Boer War days of Queen Victoria. And a young kid like Guard's character at thirteen could really be as innocent as he is. But he is approaching puberty and he's got lots of questions.

On a family outing he and the rest meet up with farm hand Alan Bates, a rough type. Pretty soon for his new friend Christie young Guard finds himself taking messages back and forth to Bates from Christie and vice versa.

She may be marrying Fox, but it's Bates that gets her mojo working. Back in those days only Viennese like Sigmund Freud and his colleagues were discussing things like that. Losey with scriptwriter Harold Pinter nailed those Victorian attitudes down quite well.

I can't believe that The Go Between got no Oscar recognition in either the set or costume design categories. Margaret Leighton did receive an Oscar nomination for her role in the Supporting Actress category. Her scene with young Domenic Guard as she suspects what's going on with her daughter is well played by both.

The Go Between is a great expose of Victorian manners and morals and a sumptious piece of film making.

It's turn of the century in the English country. Young Leo Colston is spending the summer with his rich school friend Marcus Maudsley's family estate. He is taken with Marcus' older sister Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie). He encounters tenant farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates) who recruits him to deliver love letters between Ted and Marian.

Harold Pinter adapted the screenplay from a novel. It's a rather leisurely stroll through the country especially in the beginning. The plot is not that complicated. The tension is not raised until the introduction of Burgess. There is always a sense of danger beneath the generally loving character. This inherent instability within him is the most compelling part of the movie. Marian has one great scene. It's a two hours costumed romance. It's a bit slow with moments of great intensity.

This movie is the third joint venture paring writer Harold Pinter and director Joseph Losey. The other two are The Servant (1963), and Accident (1967). This venture, combined with a top-notch cast, makes for a great film: No. 56 of the BFI's Top 100. Yet sadly, the movie has not been restored, in its original aspect ratio for DVD, and I had to see it on VHS in the full screen pan-and scan version.

I've a feeling that this is one of those films that MUST be seen in its original wide screen format, since the photography of the English countryside setting is crucial to the movie, and anything less does not tell the movie's whole story!

Michael Redgrave tells the story, in retrospect. It begins as a 12-year- old boy, Leo (Dominic Guard), comes to spend the summer of 1900 at a large English country estate. He is a guest there, and his relationship to the family is never made clear. We don't learn much about his background except what we overhear: that his mother is a widow from the city. As he is introduced at the family dinner table, he tells them that he knows magic and has conjured up curses on people, but this seems a game between him and the other boy his age on the estate, Marcus.

As the two boys play, the rest of Marcus' family starts to emerge as Marcus tells Leo about them while pointing them out. We view their lazy hot summer's life as they attempt to occupy themselves with conversation, nature, art, culture, and games. Leo attempts to fit in with the family led by its matriarch, Mrs. Maudsley (Margaret Leighton). Leo also becomes attracted to Marus' older sister, Marian (Julie Christie), and develops a puppy love for her. (At one point he proclaims that he would do almost anything for her.) She, in turn, shows an admiration for him.

One day as the family goes out for a swim, they encounter their lower- class neighbor, Ted Burgess (Alan Bates), who is trespassing on their property by swimming in their lake. Leo later meets Ted and is gradually taken into his confidence. At Ted's coaxing, he starts to secretly deliver notes to Marian, and she, in turn, returns notes to Ted, through Leo.

Feeling 'out of the loop,' Leo wants to know more. He eventually asks Ted to tell him about sex ('spooning'). At almost thirteen and with no father to guide him, Leo has never been told the facts of life. Yet, he senses that he should know more and that Ted will explain it to him-- though he never really does. When Marian becomes engaged to an upper- class gentleman, Ted seems displeased. However, after a brief break off in communications; Ted and Marian begin their secret exchanges again with Leo still acting as their dutiful Mercury-like 'go-between.' Then, on Leo's thirteenth birthday, he suddenly learns the shocking nature of his carried missives.

This film, accented by Michel Legrand's score, has a mysterious, almost Gothic, feel about it. There seems to be something always missing, just out of view, waiting to be discovered. But, just as Leo is never made part of the secret, neither is the audience--until the surprising ending.

Richly-detailed period romantic drama, told more or less from a child's viewpoint but treated with the maturity one has come to expect from a Losey film (the main plot is interspersed with fragmented clips of the boy as an old man - played by Sir Michael Redgrave - revisiting the aristocratic country estate where the majority of the narrative takes place).

Though the characters are rather swamped by their surroundings (the two leads are particularly subdued) - as captured by the gleaming cinematography of Gerry Fisher and the elegant décor of Carmen Dillon - the film allows for several good performances from a sturdy cast, including Dominic Guard (as the boy Leo who acts as messenger in the impossible love between upper-class Julie Christie and commoner Alan Bates, both of whom he idolizes), Edward Fox (as Christie's intended, a war-hero), as well as Margaret Leighton and Michael Gough (as her parents); Leighton's role remains in the background for most of the time but, then, she asserts herself during the last third to bring down the couple's relationship - with the unwilling assistance of the bewildered Guard. Besides, Michel Legrand contributes an atypically ominous yet haunting score.

This was the third and last time Losey and screenwriter Harold Pinter worked together, constituting a very fruitful and quite extraordinary collaboration; for about two-thirds of its length, the film finds Losey somewhere near his best - the contemporary subplot where Leo reprises his 'services' for an older Christie works less well, in my opinion (and is too sketchily presented anyway), rendering an already deliberately-paced film somewhat overlong!

THE GO-BETWEEN won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, was nominated for an impressive 12 BAFTA awards (winning 4) but received only 1 Oscar nomination (for Leighton as Best Supporting Actress).

While staying with a prosperous family in Norfolk, a young boy becomes the unwitting pawn in a love triangle. Remaining faithful to the book 'The Go-Between' is a nicely understated, almost serene account of an illicit affair, but if you want to see bedroom romps, bust ups, and flying crockery then go watch the soaps.

Where the film succeeds brilliantly is conveying an oppressive class system during a oppressively long, hot Summer in Edwardian England. One of the best scenes is the cricket match, and Pinter, himself a keen follower of the game, cleverly uses cricket as an allegory - Trimmingham strokes the ball with cultured finesse, while the rustic Ted Burgess just crouches and hits. In the end he gets caught out by the boy.

This film takes a less is more approach to a classic novel, and overall , i think succeeds very well.