''The Go-Between'' is a 1971
[''The Times'', 24 September 1971, page 9: ''The shadows of a country-house summer'' (film review by ]John Russell Taylor
John Russell Taylor (born 19 June 1935) is an English critic and author. He is the author of critical studies of British theatre; of critical biographies of such figures in film as Alfred Hitchcock, Alec Guinness, Orson Welles, Vivien L ...
) - Read 2014-01-11 in The Times Digital Archive British
period
Period may refer to:
Common uses
* Era, a length or span of time
* Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Period (music), a concept in musical composition
* Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...
romantic drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
directed by
Joseph Losey
Joseph Walton Losey III (; January 14, 1909 – June 22, 1984) 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. Blackliste ...
. Its screenplay, by
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) 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 spanne ...
, is an adaptation of the 1953 novel ''
The Go-Between
''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 naïv ...
'' by
L. P. Hartley
Leslie Poles Hartley (30 December 1895 – 13 December 1972) was a British novelist and short story writer. Although his first fiction was published in 1924, his career was slow to take off. His best-known novels are the '' Eustace and Hilda'' ...
. The film stars
Julie Christie
Julie Frances Christie (born 14 April 1940) is a British actress. An icon of the Swinging Sixties, Christie is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. S ...
,
Alan Bates
Sir Alan Arthur Bates (17 February 1934 – 27 December 2003) was an English actor who came to prominence in the 1960s, when he appeared in films ranging from the popular children's story '' Whistle Down the Wind'' to the " kitchen sink" dram ...
,
Margaret Leighton
Margaret Leighton, CBE (26 February 1922 – 13 January 1976) was an English actress, active on stage and television, and in film. Her film appearances included (her first credited debut feature) in Anatole de Grunwald's ''The Winslow Boy'' (1 ...
,
Michael Redgrave
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave CBE (20 March 1908 – 21 March 1985) was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author. He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in ''Mourning Becomes Elect ...
and
Dominic Guard
Dominic Guard (born 18 June 1956) is an English child psychotherapist and author, formerly an actor.
Early life
Guard was born in London on 18 June 1956. His father, Philip Guard, was an English stage actor, his mother, Charlotte Mitchell, an ...
. It won the
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...
at the
1971 Cannes Film Festival
The 24th Cannes Film Festival was held from 12 to 27 May 1971. The Palme d'Or went to ''The Go-Between'' by Joseph Losey.
The festival opened with ''Gimme Shelter'', a documentary about English rock band The Rolling Stones directed by David Maysl ...
.
Plot
The story follows a young boy named Leo Colston, who in the year 1900 is a guest of his wealthy school friend, Marcus Maudsley, to spend the summer holidays at his family's
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...
country house
An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...
. While there, Marcus is taken sick and quarantined with the
measles
Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than , cough, ...
. Left to entertain himself, Leo befriends Marcus's beautiful elder sister Marian Maudsley, and finds himself a messenger, carrying messages between her and a
tenant farmer
A tenant farmer is a person (farmer or farmworker) who resides on land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management, ...
neighbour, Ted Burgess, with whom she is engaging in a secret illicit affair.
Marian's parents, however, want her to marry Hugh, Viscount Trimingham, the estate owner, who is also courting Marian. A
heatwave
A heat wave, or heatwave, is a period of excessively hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity, especially in oceanic climate countries. While definitions vary, a heat wave is usually measured relative to the usual climate in the ...
leading to a thunderstorm coincides with Leo's thirteenth birthday party and the film's climax, when Marian's mother Madeleine forces Leo to take her to Marian, and they find her making love to Burgess in a farm building. This event has a long-lasting impact on Leo after Burgess shoots himself dead in his farmhouse kitchen.
More than fifty years later, Marian, now the Dowager Lady Trimingham, sends for Leo, wanting him to speak to her grandson to assure him that she did truly love Burgess. She asks Leo whether her grandson reminds him of anyone, and he replies "Yes. Ted Burgess".
Main cast
Production
Development
The rights to the novel had been in the hands of many producers, including
Anthony Asquith
Anthony William Landon Asquith (; 9 November 1902 – 20 February 1968) was an English film director. He collaborated successfully with playwright Terence Rattigan on ''The Winslow Boy'' (1948) and '' The Browning Version'' (1951), among oth ...
. Then Sir
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda (; born Sándor László Kellner; hu, Korda Sándor; 16 September 1893 – 23 January 1956)[Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing comedies, including ''Kind Hearts and Coronets'' (194 ...](_blank)
and
Margaret Leighton
Margaret Leighton, CBE (26 February 1922 – 13 January 1976) was an English actress, active on stage and television, and in film. Her film appearances included (her first credited debut feature) in Anatole de Grunwald's ''The Winslow Boy'' (1 ...
in the leads and employed
Nancy Mitford
Nancy Freeman-Mitford (28 November 1904 – 30 June 1973), known as Nancy Mitford, was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist. The eldest of the Mitford sisters, she was regarded as one of the "bright young things" on the London s ...
to write a script.
Hartley later said Korda had no real 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."
Joseph Losey was interested in filming the novel. He tried to get financing for a version in 1963 after filming ''
The Servant
A servant is a person working within an employer's household.
Servant or servants may refer to:
Places
* Servant, Puy-de-Dôme, France Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''The Servant'' (1963 film), a British drama
* ''The Servant'' (1989 ...
'' and said Pinter had written "two-thirds of a script,
but could not find the money to make the film, either then or at a second attempt in 1968.
"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."
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."
Pinter's screenplay for the film was his final collaboration with Losey, following ''The Servant'' (1963), ''
Modesty Blaise
''Modesty Blaise'' is a British comic strip featuring a fictional character of the same name, created by author Peter O'Donnell and illustrator Jim Holdaway in 1963. The strip follows Modesty Blaise, an exceptional young woman with many talent ...
'' (1966) and ''
Accident
An accident is an unintended, normally unwanted event that was not directly caused by humans. The term ''accident'' implies that nobody should be blamed, but the event may have been caused by unrecognized or unaddressed risks. Most researcher ...
'' (1967). It is largely faithful to the novel, although it alludes to the novel's opening events in
dialogue
Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a philosophical or didactic device, it is c ...
, in which Leo is admired by other boys at his school as they believe he used black magic to punish two bullies, and also moves events described in the novel's
epilogue
An epilogue or epilog (from Greek ἐπίλογος ''epílogos'', "conclusion" from ἐπί ''epi'', "in addition" and λόγος ''logos'', "word") is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature, usually used to bring closure to the w ...
into the central narrative.
Losey later said he was glad he and Pinter did not make the film until after ''Accident'' because that film encouraged them to play around with time in storytelling.
Finance
Eventually
John Heyman managed to get financing from
EMI Films
EMI Films was a British film studio and distributor. A 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 conne ...
, where
Bryan Forbes
Bryan Forbes CBE (; born John Theobald Clarke; 22 July 1926 – 8 May 2013) was an English film director, screenwriter, film producer, actor and novelist described as a "Renaissance man"Falk Q. . BAFTA. 17 October 2007. Retrieved 9 May 2013 an ...
agreed to pay £75,000 for the script.
Because of the relatively steep budget, EMI had to seek co-production financing from
MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
. 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.
[ Walker, Alexander (1974). ''Hollywood UK The British Film Industry in the Sixties''. ]Stein and Day
Stein and Day, Inc. was an American publishing company founded by Sol Stein and his wife Patricia Day in 1962. Stein was both the publisher and the editor-in-chief. The firm was based in New York City, and was in business for 27 years, until clos ...
. p. 439. .[HOLLYWOOD EXILE: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH LOSEY Phillips, Gene D. Journal of Popular Film; Washington, D.C. Vol. 5, Iss. 1, (1 Jan 1976): 29.]
In July 1970 MGM-EMI announced they would make the film as part of four co-productions, the others being ''
Get Carter
''Get Carter'' is a 1971 British crime film
Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detecti ...
'', ''The Boyfriend'' and ''The Last Run'' directed by
John Boorman
Sir John Boorman (; born 18 January 1933) is a British film director, best known for feature films such as ''Point Blank'' (1967), ''Hell in the Pacific'' (1968), ''Deliverance'' (1972), ''Zardoz'' (1974), '' Exorcist II: The Heretic'' (1977), ...
. Of these only the last was not made.
Shooting
Filming started in August 1970. The film was shot at
Melton Constable Hall
Melton Constable Hall is a large (Grade I listed) country house in the parish of Melton Constable, Norfolk, England designed in the Christopher Wren style and built between 1664 and 1670 for the Astley family who owned the estate from 1235 until 19 ...
,
Heydon and
Norwich
Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...
in Norfolk.
[The Go-Between: EMI Films 1970]
at Norwich the old city. Filming wound up in November.
Pinter was on set during filming.
Losey said the making of the film was one of the happiest in his career.
Dominic Guard struggled with a
stammer
Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the ...
that would make delivering his lines impossible at times, and which caused him to develop nervous
tics
A tic is a sudden, repetitive, nonrhythmic motor movement or vocalization involving discrete muscle groups.American Psychiatric Association (2000)DSM-IV-TR: Tourette's Disorder.''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'', 4th ed., ...
. Losey dealt with this by coaching Guard and telling him he had faith in him, but also in "a rather brutal way" by jumping in and telling him to stop whenever Guard was betraying a tic or stammer.
Music
Richard Rodney Bennett
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (29 March 193624 December 2012) was an English composer of film, TV and concert music, and also a jazz pianist and occasional vocalist. He was based in New York City from 1979 until his death there in 2012.Zachary Woo ...
was originally announced as the composer. However
Michel Legrand
Michel Jean Legrand (; 24 February 1932 – 26 January 2019) was a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to many son ...
ended up doing the
soundtrack
A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack o ...
for the film. The main theme was later used as the title music for the French "true crime" documentary series
''Faites entrer l'accusé'' (in French Wikipedia). The love theme "
I Still See You" written by Legrand with lyrics by Hal Sharper was performed by
Scott Walker and released as a single in late 1971.
Release
The film was first shown in May 1971 at the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
, where it won the
Grand Prix International du Festival.
A few days before,
James Aubrey, head of
MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
, disliked the final film and regarded it a flop.
The film was released in the UK on 24 September 1971, opening at
ABC1
ABC TV, formerly known as ABC1, is an Australian national public television network. It is owned and operated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and is the flagship ABC Television network. The headquarters of the ABC TV channel an ...
on
Shaftesbury Avenue
Shaftesbury Avenue is a major road in the West End of London, named after The 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. It runs north-easterly from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus. From Piccadilly Cir ...
in London.
[ A month later, on 29 October, ]Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon (4 August 1900 – 30 March 2002) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 to 6 February 1952 as the wife of King George VI. She was the l ...
arrived at the ABC Cinema on Prince of Wales Road in Norwich to attend the local premiere, thus giving Norwich its first ever Royal Premiere.
EMI sold this 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.
The inaugural screening of a brand new restoration of the film released by StudioCanal UK
StudioCanal Limited, operating as StudioCanal (formerly Optimum Releasing), is the official branch of StudioCanal in the British Isles. The company releases many films, including foreign, anime (mostly Studio Ghibli), independent, art, British, ...
took place at Cinema City, Norwich, on 11 September 2019.
Box office
By August 1971 Nat Cohen
Nat Cohen (23 December 1905 – 10 February 1988)William D. Rubinstein, et al (eds.''The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History'' Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p.171 was a British film producer and executive. For over four decades he was one of t ...
stated the film had already been "contracted" for a million dollars. The film was one of the most popular movies of 1972 at the British box office. By September 1972 James Aubrey of MGM said the film lost Columbia $200,000 and he insisted that selling the film had been the right move. In 1973 Losey said the film was still not in profit.
According to a biography of Losey, after eighteen 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 US 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 US), £96,599 from the British Film Fund, and Columbia's gross receipts in the US, Canada and France were £1,375,300. Losey's personal percentage of film's box office was £39,355. So the film was, in the end, quite profitable.[Caute p 277]
Critical reception
Charles Champlin
Charles Davenport Champlin (March 23, 1926 – November 16, 2014) was an American film critic and writer.
Life and career
Champlin was born in Hammondsport, New York. He attended high school in Camden, New York, working as a columnist for the '' ...
in the ''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' wrote after the US premiere in November 1971 that ''The Go-Between'' was one of the best films of the previous six years. Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.
Early life
Sarris was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Katav ...
in the ''Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creat ...
'' labelled it the best film of the year. Writing in 1985, Joanne Klein saw the filmscript "as a major stylistic and technical advance in Pinter’s work for the screen", and Foster Hirsch
Foster Hirsch is the author of sixteen books on subjects related to theatre and movies. A native of California, Hirsch received his B.A. from Stanford University, and holds M.F.A, M.A. and PhD degrees from Columbia University. Hirsch joined the E ...
described it as "one of the world’s great films" in 1980. In 2009, Emanuel Levy
Emanuel Levy is an American film critic and professor who has taught at Columbia University, New School for Social Research, Wellesley College, Arizona State University and UCLA Film School. Levy currently teaches in the department of cinem ...
called the film "Losey's Masterpiece".
Accolades
For many involved it was praised as the peak of their careers. Leighton earned her only Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the film. In 1999, it was included on the British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
's list of its 100 best British films.
See also
* BFI Top 100 British films
In 1999, the British Film Institute surveyed 1,000 people from the world of British film and television to produce a list of the greatest British films of the 20th century. Voters were asked to choose up to 100 films that were "culturally British". ...
* 1971 in film
* List of British films of 1971
Notes
Further reading
* Billington, Michael (2007). ''Harold Pinter''. 2nd ed. London: Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...
. . pdated edition of ''The Life and Work of Harold Pinter'' (London: Faber, 1996).*
* Forbes, Bryan (1993). ''A Divided Life Memoirs''. Mandarin Publishing
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
. .
* Gale, Steven H. (2003). ''Sharp Cut Harold Pinter's Screenplays and the Artistic Process''. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky
The University Press of Kentucky (UPK) is the scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and was organized in 1969 as successor to the University of Kentucky Press. The university had sponsored scholarly publication since 1943. In 194 ...
. .
* Gale, Steven H. (editor; 2001). ''The Films of Harold Pinter''. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press
The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by c ...
. .
* Hartop, Christopher (2011)
''Norfolk Summer: Making The Go-Between''
Cambridge: John Adamson. .
External links
*
*
*
HaroldPinter.org: ''Films by Harold Pinter - The Go Between''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Go-Between, The
1971 films
1971 romantic drama films
British romantic drama films
1970s English-language films
Films about couples
Films about families
Films about social class
Films about suicide
Films based on British novels
Films directed by Joseph Losey
Films scored by Michel Legrand
Films set in 1900
Films set in country houses
Films set in Norfolk
Films set in the 1950s
Films shot at EMI-Elstree Studios
Films shot in Norfolk
Films whose writer won the Best Screenplay BAFTA Award
Palme d'Or winners
Films with screenplays by Harold Pinter
EMI Films films
1970s British films