Themes: Midlife Crises, Crumbling Marriages, Boarding School Life
Main Cast: Michael Redgrave, Jean Kent, Nigel Patrick, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Ronald Howard, Brian Smith
Release Year: 1951
Country: UK
Run Time: 89 minutes
Plot
Michael Redgrave gives his greatest performance as Andrew Crocker-Harris, a boarding-school teacher who realizes that his life may be a failure, in this powerful adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play with a screenplay by Rattigan himself. Poor health forces Crocker-Harris to give up his teaching position after years of thankless service and scorn from his students and colleagues. His marriage to Millie (Jean Kent) is also in free fall, as his wife is openly having an affair with the school's chemistry teacher, Hunter (Nigel Patrick). The sensitivity of one student (Brian Smith) breaks through Crocker-Harris's reserved British exterior, but it takes the final departure of his wife, right before the school's graduation exercises, to wake him up once and for all. He discards his prepared speech and speaks openly to the assembled students, delivering a moving apology for having failed them as their teacher. The film's rich montage of incident and character detail builds to intense emotional heights that make this version of The Browning Version a classic. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
Review
The Browning Version is an emotionally wrenching exploration of a sad and defeated failure, but which ultimately (and surprisingly) becomes uplifting through the catharsis it evokes. Its stage origins are transparent; indeed, director Anthony Asquith almost goes out of his way to emphasize those origins, and with good reason. This is the story of a stuffy, closed-off, empty man whose classroom is a claustrophobic trap for his students; Asquith knows that by opening up the film as little as possible, he can drive home the sterility and artifice of the man and the trapped feeling he inspires in others. But Asquith doesn't allow the film itself to become stodgy; Desmond Dickinson's clever cinematography makes good use of the closed-in locations, finding variety and character without distracting from the claustrophobia. Asquith's attention to the text and the actors also pays off with sterling performances from all involved, but with a truly startling and riveting turn from Michael Redgrave in the lead. Indeed, Redgrave virtually is the film; his work here is nothing short of sensational, grabbing the viewer with a quiet intensity that is all the more remarkable considering that the character's deep, inner passion is buried so far deep inside him. There are layers upon layers upon layers in Redgrave's Crocker-Harris, one of the richest performances put upon the screen. There is so much going on with Redgrave that even the simplest of scenes has shades of hidden meaning. Redgrave aside, Browning is an excellent film; with Redgrave, it's an extraordinary one. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Bill Travers - Fletcher; Ivan Samson - Lord Baxter; Josephine Middleton - Mrs. Frobisher; Peter Jones - Carstairs; Sarah Lawson - Betty Carstairs; Scott Harold - Rev. Williamson; Judith Furse - Mrs. Williamson
Andrew Crocker-Harris is an aging Classicsmaster at an Englishpublic school, and is forced into retirement by his increasing ill health. The film, in common with the original stage play, follows the schoolmaster's final few days in his post, as he comes to terms with his sense of failure as a teacher, a sense of weakness exacerbated by his wife's infidelity and the realization that he is despised by both pupils and staff of the school.
The emotional turning-point for the cold Crocker-Harris is his pupil Taplow's unexpected parting gift, Robert Browning's translation of the Agamemnon, which he has inscribed with the Greek phrase that translates as "God from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master."
Differences between play and film
Terence Rattigan wrote the screenplay from his own one-act play. The chief difference is in the film's extended ending. The play ends before Crocker-Harris's farewell speech to the school; the film shows the speech, in which he discards his notes and admits his failings, to be received with warm applause and cheers by the boys. The film ends on a final conversation between Crocker-Harris and Taplow.
Cast
Michael Redgrave played the embittered Andrew Crocker-Harris, a role taken up in the 1994 remake by Albert Finney. Jean Kent plays his wife Millie, and Nigel Patrick plays her lover Frank Hunter, Andrew's fellow schoolmaster who eventually rejects Millie for her cruelty towards her husband, and takes pity on him. A young Ronald Howard plays Gilbert, Crocker-Harris's successor, and Wilfrid Hyde-White plays the Headmaster. Brian Smith plays Taplow. There are also notable uncredited appearances by Bill Travers and Judith Furse.
The Greek text that appears on the blackboard in Crocker-Harris's classroom is from the Agamemnon. Apparently a description of Menelaus's despair after his abandonment by Helen, the lines were translated by Robert Browning thus:
"And, through desire of one across the main,
A ghost will seem within the house to reign.
And hateful to the husband is the grace
Of well-shaped statues: from—in place of eyes
Those blanks—all Aphrodite dies."
