Themes: Teachers and Students, Boarding School Life
Main Cast: Albert Finney, Greta Scacchi, Matthew Modine, Julian Sands, Michael Gambon
Release Year: 1994
Country: UK
Run Time: 97 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Forty-three years after the first screen treatment of Terence Rattigan's play about a teacher facing the end of his career, Albert Finney takes on the role of Mr. Crocker-Harris, the Latin teacher forced into early retirement by a heart condition. After teaching in a public school for twenty years, Crocker-Harris is being put out to pasture in a less stressful job teaching English to foreigners. Meanwhile, his home life is also falling apart: his wife (Greta Scacchi) is having an affair with the American chemistry teacher (Matthew Modine), who nevertheless admires Crocker-Harris for his dignity and decency. Through it all, Crocker-Harris hides his pain behind his stiff British reserve. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
Review
Versatile Albert Finney is at home in the role of Crocker-Harris, a gruff schoolmaster who requires his high-born brats to recite Aeschylus in the original Greek. When Taplow presents him the Browning version on a soccer field, Finney weeps unsentimentally; his tears contain salt, not sugar. His brilliant performance reminds us all of the unfeeling classroom overlord we hated in our school days but later grew to love in the hurly-burly of everyday life for which he prepared us. Scriptwriter Ronald Harwood's rendition of the Terence Rattigan play on which the film is based has obvious strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths is the subtle parallels -- between Agamemnon and Crocker-Harris and between Taplow and Crocker-Harris -- that illuminate Finney's character. One of the weaknesses is the melodramatic speech at the end. Scacchi has sufficient spleen to make her character believable, and young Silverstone exhibits sensitivity as Taplow. The Browning Version is a worthy film that received mixed reviews, perhaps because the naysayers incorrectly translated and interpreted its main character. ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide
Maryam D'Abo - Diana; Ben Silverstone - Taplow; Mark Long - Foster; Belinda Low - Rowena Baxter; Dinah Stabb - Jane Frobisher; Heathcote Williams - Dr. Lake; George Harris - Adakendi Senior; Susie Figgis; Oliver Milburn - Trubshaw; Jeff Nuttall - Lord Baxter
Credit
Olivia Stewart - Associate Producer, Susie Figgis - Casting, Fotini Dimou - Costume Designer, Mike Figgis - Director, John K. Watson - Director, Herve Schneid - Editor, Garth Thomas - Executive Producer, Mark Isham - Composer (Music Score), Chris Munro - Musical Direction/Supervision, John Beard - Production Designer, Jean-François Robin - Cinematographer, Mimi Polk - Producer, Ridley Scott - Producer, Mimi Polk Sotela - Producer, Ronald Harwood - Screenwriter, Terence Rattigan - Play Author
Andrew Crocker-Harris (Albert Finney) is an embittered and disliked teacher of Greek and Latin at a British Public school. After nearly 20 years of service, he is being forced to retire on the pretext of his health, and perhaps may not even be given a pension. The boys regard him as a Hitler, with some justification. His wife Laura (Greta Scacchi) is unfaithful, and lives to wound him any way she can. Andrew must come to terms with his failed life and regain at least his own self-respect.[1]
