The Browning Version (1951 film)

This article is about the 1951 film. For other uses, see The Browning Version (disambiguation).

The Browning Version
Redgrave on the cover of the Criterion Collection DVD release of The Browning Version
Directed by	Anthony Asquith
Produced by	Teddy Baird Earl St. John
Written by	Terence Rattigan
Starring	Michael Redgrave Jean Kent Nigel Patrick
Music by	Arnold Bax Kenneth Essex
Cinematography	Desmond Dickinson
Editing by	John D. Guthridge
Distributed by	General Film Distr. (UK) Universal Pictures (USA)
Release date(s)	1951
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

The Browning Version is a 1951 British film based on the 1948 play of the same name by Terence Rattigan. It was directed by Anthony Asquith and starred Michael Redgrave.

Plot

Andrew Crocker-Harris is an aging Classics master at an English public 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

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 as the embittered Andrew Crocker-Harris
• Jean Kent as his wife Millie
• Nigel Patrick as her lover Frank Hunter, Andrew's fellow schoolmaster who eventually rejects Millie for her cruelty towards her husband
• Ronald Howard as Gilbert, Crocker-Harris's successor
• Wilfrid Hyde-White as the Headmaster
• Brian Smith as Taplow
• Bill Travers as Fletcher
• Judith Furse as Mrs. Williamson
• Peter Jones as Carstairs
• Sarah Lawson as Betty Carstairs
• Scott Harold as Rev. Williamson
• Paul Medland as Wilson
• Ivan Samson as Lord Baxter
• Josephine Middleton as Mrs. Frobisher

Production

The film was shot at Pinewood Studios. The school exteriors were filmed on location at the Sherborne School in Sherborne, Dorset.

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."

Notably, the film's director, screenwriter, and star — Asquith, Rattigan, and Redgrave, respectively — were all closeted gay men.

Awards

Won

• Cannes Film Festival
  • Best Actor (Michael Redgrave)
  • Best Screenplay

• Berlin International Film Festival
  • Bronze Berlin Bear (Drama)
  • Small Bronze Plate

Nominated

• Cannes Film Festival - Palme d'Or

References

Bibliography

• Vermilye, Jerry (1978), The Great British Films, Citadel Press, pp 150–152, ISBN 080650661X.

See also

• The Browning Version (1955 film), a TV film version starring Peter Cushing
• The Browning Version (1985 film), a TV film version starring Ian Holm
• The Browning Version (1994 film), another feature film version starring Albert Finney

External links

• The Browning Version at the Internet Movie Database
• The Browning Version at AllRovi
• The Browning Version (1951 film) at the TCM Movie Database
• Criterion Collection essay by Geoffrey Macnab on the 1951 film