DVD/150: THE BROWNING VERSION (Anthony Asquith, 1951)

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.

DVD/150: THE SOUND BARRIER (David Lean, 1952)

It shows how good a director David Lean was that a film that should make me run a mile - ex-WWII RAF pilots attempt to break the sound barrier - is, in fact, an involving drama.

It's popularity here and in America was reflected at award time: Terence Rattigan was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay and it righly won for Best Sound with it's excellent use of silence, echoes and the sudden whoosh of jets.  At the BAFTA Awards it won Best Film, Best British Film and Best British Actor for Ralph Richardson.

Richardson - I think playing a Yorkshire man but going a bit Gorbals at times - plays John Ridgefield, the owner of a jet building company who, while obsessively developing a jet to break the sound barrier, remains emotionally distant from his daughter and son.

Father and daughter are reconciled but at a high cost to them.

Shelf or charity shop? THE SOUND BARRIER is part of a David Lean box-set but I am happy to keep it for Sir Ralph's Ibsen-like Ridgefield and the performances of Nigel Patrick as his son-in-law pilot Tony, Joseph Tomelty as his over-worked jet designer and I even like Ann Todd who, although glacial as ever, finally proves effective as Ridgefield's daughter Susan.  A special mention too for Jack Hildyard's excellent cinematography; his striking visuals really lift the film out of the ordinary.