The Go-Between

Dir: Joseph Losey/GB/1970/116 mins

Lps: Alan Bates, Julie Christie, Dominic Guard, Michael Redgrave

"The past is a foreign country. They may do things differently there" is the resounding line that reverberates throughout The Go-Between, and from the moment it is spoken, the film continues by thrusting the past and present violently together, juxtaposing them with jarring and bitter conclusions.

The past is a stately home at the turn of the century. A 12-year-old boy, Leo, innocent and trusting, unwittingly becomes the secret courier of letters between a friend's sister and a local farmer (Julie Christie and Alan Bates), lovers constrained by the strictures of Victorian sensibilities and society. Matters run an inevitable, destructive course, and the present, interspersed with the past, gradually reveals the effects of the sexual laws on all those involved, as well as the changeability of love and human nature over a period of over half a century.

As Leo, Dominic Guard gives an endearing portrayal of an innocent drawn into a world he cannot possibly understand, made more poignant by the contrast with his older self, the narrator, played by Michael Redgrave with pathetic bitterness and remorse. Indeed, not only are the characters contrasted in their youthful, passionate idealism and their later aged disillusionment, but Harold Pinter, in a characteristic adaptation of L.P. Hartley's influential novel, meshes together the two societies, the Edwardian and the post-war, bringing out harsh and uncompromising insights into the past, the present and the insurmountable passing of time. 

ML