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The Go-Between [1970]
from Optimum Home Entertainment
starring Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, Michael Redgrave, Dominic Guard
directed by Joseph Losey

Features:

• PAL

Editorial Review:

Writer Harold Pinter and director Joseph Losey always hoped to make an adaptation of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Their version of L.P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between offers tantalising hints as to how the Proust film might have turned out. An old man (Michael Redgrave) thinks back to a summer many years before when, as a young boy, he stayed with the aristocratic Maudsley family in their beautiful house in the Norfolk countryside. On the threshold of adolescence, intensely curious about sex, he became the go-between for Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie) and local farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates) as they conducted an affair behind the backs of the Maudsley family.

This is a slow-moving but beguiling story of lost innocence. There's a subtlety and intelligence here rarely found in British costume dramas. The filmmakers go to enormous lengths to recreate Edwardian England, but never allow the period detail to stifle the storytelling. Although life with the Maudsleys seems idyllic--an endless round of picnics, cricket matches and parties--there is always an undercurrent of violence. The Maudsleys are inveterate snobs. The terrifying Mrs Maudsley (played by Margaret Leighton) simply can't countenance the idea that her daughter would have an affair with a man so far beneath her on the social scale as Burgess. The little boy carries the messages between the lovers without ever quite understanding how explosive their contents are. --Geoffrey Macnab

The delicate story of a young boy's adoration for a beautiful young woman, and of his involvement in her love affair with one of her father's tenant farmers. Based on the novel by L.P. Hartley.

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0

• The aspect ratio
  Yes, it is a pity that the movie is not presented in its intended theatrical aspect ratio 1.85. But to make it clear it is not presented in "butchered 1.33 to fit conventional TV screens" or a "TV-friendly crop of the original wide-screen movie" either. The movie is presented in its original open matte format, which means it was shot in conventional 1.33 to fit TV screens. For theatrical release the picture was then cropped at the top and the bottom, a common practice since the Fifties. So the picture is... more info

• Great film...poor transfer
  I was so looking forward to the release on DVD of this great film. However, the lazy use of the cropped tv version as opposed to a faithful remaster of the original beautifully shot widescreen film is a severe disappointment. The producers should go back to square one and do the job properly...the DVD release of 'If' is a great example for them.

• Strange passage to DVD
  This film first appeared on DVD last year, when it was included as a freebie inside an edition of the Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail. Now the distributors have suddenly decided that they could make some money out of this outstanding film. Sadly they appear to have used the same 4x3 TV-friendly crop of the original wide-screen movie.
  So, four or five stars for the movie, but one or two stars for the DVD design.

• 5 star film, 1 star DVD
  This is a superb film, unfolding at a moodily languid pace and portraying the injustice of the class system in British society with far more subtlety than most period films. It is a film for intelligent viewers who can appreciate the accumulation of hints and nuances that support this through line. Alan Bates is superb, and Julie Christie is also very well cast. Though he only appears at the end, Michael Redgrave is mesmeric as the haunted bachelor asked to once more walk into the trauma of his youth. This... more info

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