The Worst Film Ever

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

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.

When one hears the music from the Thomas Crown Affair, Summer of '42 and Yentl, its easy to understand why composer Michel Legrand has won three Oscars. I think for this film he had a really, really off-day. The strident piano music sounds like an attempt to harmonically illustrate the discord between the Leo's infatuation with the beautiful Marian, and the actuality of her coquettish behaviour. It's ridiculously unsubtle and becomes more and more tiresome as it repeats with almost every dramatic turn the film takes. The only other criticism is that some of flash forwards are very poorly lit and I can't see how this is for any particular dramatic effect. The cast is superb - Margaret Leighton well deserving her Oscar nomination, the dialogue is nicely balanced, the pace well-judged. Lovely film - really awful music.

Richly-detailed period romantic drama, told more or less from a child's viewpoint but treated with the maturity one has come to expect from a Losey film (the main plot is interspersed with fragmented clips of the boy as an old man - played by Sir Michael Redgrave - revisiting the aristocratic country estate where the majority of the narrative takes place).Though the characters are rather swamped by their surroundings (the two leads are particularly subdued) - as captured by the gleaming cinematography of Gerry Fisher and the elegant décor of Carmen Dillon - the film allows for several good performances from a sturdy cast, including Dominic Guard (as the boy Leo who acts as messenger in the impossible love between upper-class Julie Christie and commoner Alan Bates, both of whom he idolizes), Edward Fox (as Christie's intended, a war-hero), as well as Margaret Leighton and Michael Gough (as her parents); Leighton's role remains in the background for most of the time but, then, she asserts herself during the last third to bring down the couple's relationship - with the unwilling assistance of the bewildered Guard. Besides, Michel Legrand contributes an atypically ominous yet haunting score.This was the third and last time Losey and screenwriter Harold Pinter worked together, constituting a very fruitful and quite extraordinary collaboration; for about two-thirds of its length, the film finds Losey somewhere near his best - the contemporary subplot where Leo reprises his 'services' for an older Christie works less well, in my opinion (and is too sketchily presented anyway), rendering an already deliberately-paced film somewhat overlong! THE GO-BETWEEN won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, was nominated for an impressive 12 BAFTA awards (winning 4) but received only 1 Oscar nomination (for Leighton as Best Supporting Actress).

Easily one of the best acted, best directed and most intellectually intriguing films I have ever seen. Julie Christie is so lovely that you will never forget her. The screenplay by Pinter is impeccable, building a rhythmic alternation of times and places, an alternation that ultimately crashes together. I have seen this movie several times - like Casablanca, it just keeps getting better - and have taught it to inner-city pre-freshmen - they loved it. They were not at all used to films that try to be artistic creations, and the slowness of the pace at first threw them off. However, once we explored the multiple levels of meaning and revelation in each of the initial scenes, they became drawn into the film, caught up in its mystery and romance and fascinated by the vision of a totally alien, yet oddly familiar, world. Losey at his best is on a par with Renoir. Why isn't this film on DVD? Even the background music is really good.