Of the ten films made by director Anthony Asquith and writer Terence Rattigan, the most resonant remains THE BROWNING VERSION, released three years after Rattigan's one-act play opened.
Rattigan deservedly won the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his adaptation.
Michael Redgrave won the Cannes Best Actor Award while also giving one of the great screen performances as Andrew Crocker-Harris, a classics master who, after 18 years teaching in a boys school, has atrophied into a pedantic, remote man. When it's announced that Crocker-Harris is leaving the next day due to ill health, he is made aware of the dislike of pupils and colleagues.
His wife Millie is also openly contemptuous, barely hiding an affair with science teacher Frank, but when she learns Andrew has been refused an expected school pension, she goes on the attack.
But a pupil's unexpected goodbye present changes everything...
Shelf or charity shop? Currently living in my plastic
storage box, THE BROWNING VERSION is a film that delivers a quietly devastating emotional punch. Beautifully directed by Asquith, his film allows you to slowly side against the malign forces facing Crocker-Harris both professionally and personally. As I said, Michael Redgrave delivers not only his best screen performance but one of the truly great screen performances; staying within the strict parameters of the character but by through the smallest, precise timing of gesture and voice, you will be totally on his side by the end of the film. There is excellent support from Jean Kent as the vindictive Millie, Nigel Patrick as her lover Frank who makes amends for their deception and Wilfred Hyde White as the smoothly unfeeling headmaster. A special mention for Brian Smith as young Taplow whose unexpected farewell present to Crocker-Harris starts a chain reaction. This scene where his small act of kindness causes Crocker-Harris to finally break down in halting sobs is the film's devastating core.
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