"We can't expect to be happy all the time, can we?"
The Go-Between (1971) marks Joseph Losey's final collaboration with Harold Pinter. After The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967) it's a straightforward take on L.P. Hartley's acclaimed Edwardian novel. Yet it provides a new setting for Losey and Pinter's obsession with class barriers and psychological warfare.Teenage Leo Colston (Dominic Guard) spends a summer with friend Marcus Maudsley (Richard Gibson), becoming smitten with Marcus's sister Marian (Julie Christie). Leo grows ensnared in a love triangle between Marian, her scarred suitor Hugh Trimingham (Edward Fox) and farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates), who use the boy to relay messages to and spy on each other. Leo's increasingly uncomfortable in his position, finding the adults more willing to confide in him than each other - and their confidences are both troubling and dangerous.
The Go-Between is a restrained, barbed drama. Pinter relishes showing his protagonists fatally straightjacketed by social roles. Marian marries the vapid, self-impressed Hugh as an obligation, lacking the will to protest. Ted only interacts with the protagonists at a cricket match (later singing a music hall ballad), where he's regarded as an ape-like curiosity. Despite outward politeness there's no connection or understanding, only icy contempt. Leo moves between both worlds, despite being a "poor nothing out of nowhere"; he ends up bearing their insults, getting an unpleasant taste of grown-up hypocrisy.
Losey's direction marks a notable break from his baroque style. Shooting in the Norfolk countryside, Losey and photographer Gerry Fisher get beautiful scenery of the Maudsley estate, Ted's farmland and windswept forests. The movie's highpoint is an intricately-staged cricket match, where Ted's vulgar style of play amuses and appalls the assembled gentry. The film has a straightforward, almost unpolished style compared with contemporaries like Ryan's Daughter and Women in Love, seeming all the better for it. Only Michel Legrand's melodramatic score strikes a bum note.
Julie Christie expresses her repressed personality only with Leo, showing love and frustration she can't show to others. Dominic Guard (Picnic at Hanging Rock) is impressive, alternately confused and dismayed by his glances at adult society. Alan Bates is an earthy rustic similar to his role in Far from the Madding Crowd. Edward Fox plays a snotty aristocrat better than anyone; this role landed him The Day of the Jackal. There are supporting roles for Margaret Leighton (Lady Caroline Lamb) as snidely domineering matriarch and Michael Gough (Batman), her diffident husband. Michael Redgrave appears briefly as adult Leo.
After The Go-Between, Losey produced The Assassination of Trotsky (1972), a colossally misjudged biopic-cum-art film. Losey then retreated into modest theater adaptations (A Doll's House, Galileo), never regaining his artistic footing. Without Harold Pinter, Losey seemed unable to cull his artistic excess. Between them, they produced three extraordinary films.
