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.

Invited by his upper crust classmate Marcus Maudsley to summer at his family estate thirteen year old Leo Colston is taken into confidence by Marcus's beautiful older sister Marian (Julie Christie) to act as a messenger to her illicit lover, local farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates.) Marian is engaged to Lord Trimingham (Edward Fox) whom Leo develops a strong liking for. This complicates matters for Leo who has the same feelings for Ted and out right affection for Marian. The child's innocence becomes a detriment however when he attempts to make sense of the adult world through inquiry of those very much involved and it holds drastic consequence for all.Sumptuously photographed (Gerry Fisher) and magnificently costumed The Go-Between evokes an almost fairy tale milieu in it's early moments with summer in full bloom and the well heeled Maudsleys lounging in finery amid the lush green trappings of their estate. The Empire in 1900 is still sun 24/7 and the Maudleys, confident and mildly aloof, representative of that power. Seen through the adolescent eyes of Marcus we are exposed to the hypocritical trappings of class snobbery, stuffiness and rules of the game. As things begin to unravel the lush lazy days of summer become more storm ridden and the restraint and decorum of the Maudsleys frayed all of which is powerfully summed up and splendidly depicted by Director Joseph Losey in a scene that begins with Leo's birthday party with everyone festooned in paper party hats.Losey's understated style does a nice job of slowly revealing his story for maximum effect. His use of flash forward, confusing at first, is spare but well utilized to tie lose ends together. The overall morose mood of the film is retained throughout though Lalo Schiffrin's score reeking of hysteria threatens it on more than one occasion.Christie and Bates, Edward Fox as Twillingham and the young Dominic Guard are excellent fits in their roles but Margaret Leighton as Lady Maudsley turns on the jets as the film closes and walks away with the acting honors.

Losey/Pinter's adaptation of LP Hartley's novel follows Leo, invited to spend the summer with his upper crust schoolfriend's family in Norfolk. He contracts a bit of a crush on Julie Christie's Marian (his friend's older sister) and consequently gets drawn into the awkward, tacit love triangle between her fiancée Trimingham (Fox) and masculine local farmer Ted (Bates). Losey interpolates brief, silent flash-forwards to the present day as Leo revisits the area to speak with Marian in her dotage.If one has seen, or, more pertinently, read Atonement (Joe Wright's film on Ian McEwan's book) then you'll be familiar with the themes and, in part, composition of The Go-Between. Leo divines the sexual tension and intent of the relationship between Marian and Ted but, being not only young but also uninitiated in the implicit obligations of the upper class, cannot understand why Marian is simultaneously agreeing to her union with Trimingham. Unlike Atonement, Leo doesn't wilfully interfere with the relationships. Instead he does act as a catalyst that allows them to happen and is consequently affected by the outcome - the final sequence is a dryly tragic denouement which recalls the TV interview epilogue of Atonement; only here there is no atonement to be made or had.The film is beautifully and unequivocally shot. The past may indeed be a different country, as the voice-over tells us but it's not a figment of the imagination. The acting is very good, with the exception of the younger Maudsleys who are weak. Michel Legrand's score is a cunning set of neo-baroque variations for piano, rendered oppressively rather like the society and heat. Losey's handling of the drizzled flash-forwards is a beautifully rendered conceit that really makes the film for me: wistful, English and eloquent. 7/10

This is a beautifully filmed piece of cinema in which the real "stars" are time and place. The plot, such as it is, is rather thin and drawn out, whilst characterisation is sketchy and insubstantial. There is a sense that such sketchiness is deliberate and justified in order to capture those distances which exist between childhood and the adult world, between one class and another and, of course, the sexes. Alan Bates' farmer Ted Burgess is given no depth beyond that of horny rustic, whilst Julie Christie as Marian wears her dresses well without once betraying any real hint of what she feels beneath her corset. This emotionless quality which hangs over the drama as heavily as the Norfolk heat in which it takes place is nowhere as perfectly captured as in the smoking room scene in which Hugh (Edward Fox) and the head of the household Mr Maudsley( Michael Gough) communicate over the head of Leo, wonderfully played by Dominic Court, with looks and pauses and words whose deeper meanings the young boy can only come to understand when he is older and able to look back on the events of that summer as an adult. No review of this film would be complete without a mention of Margaret Leighton's commanding performance as the powerful, class obsessed matriarch, Mrs Maudsley who, ultimately, is forced to cut through the knowing acceptance of the males, and bring the relationship between Marian and Ted to an end, at the same time, unwittingly bringing Leo face to face with the disturbing truth of what goes on between men and women in the world of adults.