Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1509 in VHS
• Released on: 1996-02-20
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Formats: Color, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 118 minutes

Customer Reviews

Wishing for DVD
The third, last, and probably most famous of the collaborations between director Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter, "The Go-Between" is a coming of age story for adults. While containing all the ingredients of the standard "summer I became a man" situation, "The Go-Between" presents a bitter, sophisticated view of sexual awakening that may take many viewers by surprise.

Like another great American expatriate filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, Losey was a visual stylist with a bleak take on humanity. Losey's considerable technical skill--and pessimism--are at peak in "The Go-Between." Set on an English country estate during the summer of 1900, everything that contributes toward the sense of the past is ravishingly textured. A long, hot summer afternoon relieved by an impromptu bathing party, the justly famous cricket match sequence, thick with lassitude, the services before Sunday breakfast, stiffly formal, familiar yet remote at the same time, the games of croquet, seen from a pretty distance, as if watching chess pieces in boaters and crinolines--all testify to the director's ability to find those details that help to make the past come to life.

Amid the lush green fields, the breezes blowing through the trees, the sun dancing across the reeds and the sparkle of the water, a group of selfish, repressed upper and middle-class English pose, lie and suffer through the heat. At the center of the story is Leo Colston, a thirteen year old visitor to the estate who gets caught up in the adults' deceptions and machinations. As with most of Losey and Pinter's work, it's never entirely clear exactly who knows what. There is only the constant, heavy implication that something lurks just beneath the surface, and it is probably unpleasant. "The Go-Between" is practically a circus of raised eyebrows passed between the characters in knowing, unspoken comment. Leo, the innocent outsider, ends up impaled on their smug superciliousness, and for all the summer lyricism, the net effect is ashen.

All of the actors are superb. Margaret Leighton, as the matriarch of the household deserves special mention for her quicksilver motions, her ability to convey Madeleine's barely constrained neurasthenic rage. The music, by Michel Legrand, can be painfully loud and abrupt in places, but there's no denying that it's catchy. (How appropriate it is is another matter.) The transfer is not grossly awful, but it doesn't allow much informed evaluation of the cinematography. At the very least it would be nice to see the film in the correct aspect ratio. Contrasty, over-saturated, with a warbly soundtrack, the video makes you long for DVD. While I don't have much hope of it (Columbia is the studio, after all, that allowed "Lawrence of Arabia" literally to rot in its vaults), perhaps we can look forward to a new transfer that takes advantage of DVD's capabilities. This movie certainly deserves the best the studio can offer.

Sly Study of Aristocrats With Their Gaurd Down
Th entire film takes place on the grounds of a sprawling English manor. Young aristocrat Marcus has invited Leo whose background is much more humble to spend the summer at his familys estate. Marcus and Leo are both just about to turn 13--that ripe age with one foot in childhood and one beginning to test the waters of adulthood. Marcus is a snobby little brat quite used to the comforts of his palatial home but Leo is utterly amazed at all he sees. And what he is most amazed with is Marcus' older sister Marion played by Julie Christie who we first meet lounging in a hammock in a long lacey white dress--she is like a vision. Leo is immediately smitten and Marion takes the socially awkward Leo under her lovely wing. Leo also gets to meet an assortment of other aristocrats including the Viscount Trimmingham played by Edward Fox. The first thing Leo notices about Trimmingham is a scar which runs across one cheek which he wears like a souvenier or battle trophy(which it is compliments of the Boer Wars). Trimmingham is a blue blood through and through but he treats Leo with an amused kind of graciousness and wins the young man over. Leo also runs into the groundskeeper, a long haired and bearded robust and ruddy outdoorsman called Ted Burgess played by the always very appealing Alan Bates. Leo is subjected to a bit of aristocratic snobbery and even his friend likes to constantly remind him what a privelege he has been honored with to spend the summer in such surroundings but they all grow fond of him as well. Marion is quite aware that Leo is smitten with her and she treats him like her most loyal servant. Soon she has Leo playing messenger for her--running notes to Ted Burgess who in turn sends notes back to her via Leo as well. Marion is engaged to mary Lord Trimmingham and it takes Leo awhile to suspect just what exactly he has been parlaying between Marion and Ted. But figure it out he does and it baffles him that Marion can carry on with Ted while being engaged to Trimmingham. The film is as elegant as they come and the estates opulent interiors and lush grounds and forests and fields keep your eyes affixed. The time is 1914. A time when horse and buggies are still commonplace and cars a bit of a rarity at least on country estates. Its also a time when war is looming. Director Joseph Losey and scriptwriter Harold Pinter examine the social mores of the elite class by showing them with their gaurd down. And a fascinating glimpse it is.

The flash forward device at the end of the film which shows a meeting between Marion and Leo many years after that fateful summer interestingly conveys the fact that Marion and aristocrats in general still live in their cocoon of luxury and remain unchanged though the rest of the world has completely altered around them. That last scene of the film no doubt had a sting to it for English audiences when it was released in 1971. But I don't think time has diminished that sting.

Life-altering
I first saw this movie on TV on channel 7 in New York one late night in the early 70's. (That was back when movies were still watchable on TV, but that's another story.) The non-linearity of the story-telling immediately held me. Now, connect-the-dots film-making is all over the place, but "The Go-Between" was there first and best.

Dominic Guard plays the wide-eyed young enabler of the title to a class-bound pair of lovers during a hot Edwardian summer, with disatrous results. Near the end of his life the character attempts self-reconciliation by returning to the scene. Michael Redgrave's time-shifted fast-forwards are shattering as we see starkly the effects of his emotional enchainment.

Pinter's script is a contained explosion of drama, especially at the suspenseful climactic moments. Losey's direction pulses with rhythm and grace. Michel Legrand's music swirls with his famous cycles of half-diminished chords, portending dread and death.

It is an absolute crime that this film is so unavailable. I really wish the Criterion folks would get on this one.