gizmomogwai The inexplicable winner of the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film (equivalent of the Palme d'Or) at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, The Go-Between (1970) is, to a degree, a love story. Romance films don't typically interest me unless there's some kind of twist to it. In this case, there appeared to be potential in telling it from the perspective of a young boy, supposedly a junior sorcerer, who acts as a messenger between two lovers (one being Julie Christie) and faces an ethical dilemma in assisting what's essentially adultery. Elements of class inequality are touched on.Alas, I don't feel the film quite realizes its potential. What relevance there is to the boy dabbling in "magic" may come across in the book, but in the film it seems immaterial and largely unexplored. The drama concerning the main plot rarely materializes. Aside from one scene where the boy is interrogated shrewdly by an old lady about inconsistencies as to who he's bringing messages to, we only have one small hissy fit thrown by Christie when the boy refuses to deliver a letter. What we're left with is mainly a slow, uneventful look at the English countryside, with most characters being polite but grey and dull, and hard to empathize with. Cannes had better than this.

jhseeker I am amazed at the positive reviews of this film! I was really shocked by the way it seems to have been thrown together.The first jarring presence is the theme by Michel Legrand, whose score though being enigmatic is completely out of place and mismatched to the country home setting, it sounds like a spy theme and is reminiscent of the era's John Barry/Iprcress File. This main theme is irritatingly repeated over and over at the expense of badly needed expository dialogue. Where is the dialogue? The great Harold Pinter must've taken all of an afternoon to write it all - a pitiable effort for such a great book. We are instead treated to endlessly repeated shots of Leo running back and forth through he fields in long shot. Joseph Losey has used no supporting players, opting instead to use what looks like Norfolk locals (why?) who are hopeless in delivering the simplest of lines and so are in many cases, dubbed. There is no atmosphere! The actors don't inhabit the house at all- the sound and lighting is terrible! Unfortunately the bulk of the story requires child actors, Leo just about gets away with it but the actor playing Marcus is awful, many scenes are botched and left in the edit I can only assume they ran out of time. The big scenes of cricket match and party after, so important to the story are completely ruined by terrible editing. Why is Leo's song not more imaginatively realised? It would have helped the story so much. Also Trimingham is meant to be repulsive, making him handsome kills one of the most powerful motivations for Marian's behaviour. The major cast are good but lack direction and a decent script they loo lost half the time! Honestly, I could go on I am so disappointed in this treatment of an amazing book which everyone should read (hopefully they haven't seen this first). And yes, please, someone do a remake! Even Michael Bay could do it better.

writers_reign There are several plus points - the lavish sets, sense of atmosphere, decent acting - but against that must be set the negatives not least of which is the irritating, intrusive and anti-melodic score, almost as if Michel Legrand has abandoned his romantic image and is anticipating Michael Nymen. The score does everything but beat you with a club in its anxiety to highlight what? It is, to quote Macbeth, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Apart from this we are not told how a tenant farmer was able to seduce a daughter from the 'big house'. Conveniently they are already lovers when the film opens but it is almost impossible to imagine any circumstances in which they could have reached that state given the rigid caste system that obtained in 1900. Some sixty years before females aspired to let alone demanded orgasm Christie is clearly a highly sexed emancipated (if only mentally) female with no concern about falling pregnant out of wedlock in a period that offered no contraceptives other than self-control. If you can swallow these improbabilities it's a pleasant enough entry.

jc-osms The source novel, (obviously inspired by Lawrence's more carnal "Lady Chatterley's Lover") I had read a year or so ago on holiday and thoroughly enjoyed so it was with much anticipation that I settled down at last to watch this celebrated adaptation by American exile Joseph Losey, with its top-notch British cast. I wasn't disappointed. To the best of my recollection, the film is very true to the novel, only slightly modifying the epilogue-type ending by introducing the years-later reunion of Marion and Leo in teasingly inserted sequences which initially might confuse the casual viewer. The main theme of the movie, to my mind is the corruption of innocence as the adults in the world of naive young outsider Leo, take advantage of his susceptibility and willingness to please, not to mention his pubescent fascination with physical love, to use him as an unwitting pawn in their adult games of deception and lust. Thus we learn at the conclusion that Leo has never married or, even, by inference, enjoyed any kind of natural relationship with a woman, thus is his trust and innocence abused for all time.The film of course also comments tellingly on snobbery, class division and heroism in between-the-wars England but in the end its most important facet is the interplay of the four main characters, Marion, Ted Burgess, Lord Trillingham and of course young Leo, as the film moves inexorably towards its predictably tragic ending. The acting is generally very good, especially the main female parts played by Julie Christie and Margaret Leighton as errant daughter and suspicious mother respectively. The male acting I was slightly less enamoured of, Alan Bates failing to me to really suggest the rough physicality which draws Marion away from the safe, arranged, matrimonial match offered by the affable jolly good chap, Lord Trillingham, well played by a young Edward Fox. The young actor playing Leo, acts his part very well although the scenes with his young school-friend, Marion's younger brother, are a bit strained and accordingly unconvincing. The direction I found largely well-paced, although one or two short interludes seemed unnecessary in the editing and occasionally the frightfully, frightfully accents of the cast grated somewhat. Harold Pinter's screenplay stays properly close to its source and is less noticeably Pinter-ian than I would have expected, not too many characteristic pregnant pauses or repetitions. The climax (sorry, no pun intended) in the barn was effectively led up to and delivered. I did however find the music by Michel Legrand lacked a little subtlety, out of kilter with the delicate emotions on display here and also lacking the required pastoral touch. On the whole though this was a rewarding and entrancing movie, as good a classic book adaptation as you could hope to see and probably a precursor of Merchant-Ivory's success later in the decade.