THE GO-BETWEEN: I know what you did 70 summers before last.

Almost two decades before the producer-director team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory patented the now universally accepted image of turn of the 20th century England with 'Maurice', 'Howard's End' and 'Remains of the Day' director Joseph Losey created his own very similar vision with THE GO-BETWEEN.

Set in the summer of 1900 in the dying days of the reign of Queen Victoria, the story focuses on 13 year old Leo (Dominic Guard) who's spending the school holidays at the Norfolk estate of his rich classmate Marcus. He enters a world rigidly governed by class where Marcus's family display a paternal interest in the well being of their servants and farm workers providing the latter keep to their place. That's how it's always been and how, in the glorious hot summer of 1900 with Victoria reigning over an Empire than spanned the globe, it seemed it always would be.
But Marcus's older sister Marian (Julie Christie) is carrying on a secret affair with handsome local farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates) and enlists the naive Leo to act as their postman, ferrying letters between the two of them.  At first he's eager to please but as he begins to realise what's going on he starts demanding answers to his questions about the mysteries of adult life, like love and sex and trust, honesty and deception.
The dreamy, idyllic gold-hued memory of that long ago summer is contrasted sharply with the grey wet and windy present (of 1971) as the septuagenarian Leo (Michael Redgrave) returns to Norfolk to revisit the places that played such an important part in his loss of childhood innocence. The suggestion is that life was better in the past than it is in the present (a notion Woody Allen also explores in is latest film 'Midnight in Paris') although Losey makes it abundantly clear that this is not the case. Despite the golden tint and cloudless skies there's an oppressiveness to the atmosphere that's caused by more than just the hot weather. It's the suffocating weight of expectations of a class structure which makes no allowance for individual wants and desires and compels everyone to play by rules they had no hand in creating. Marian and Ted's relationship is doomed from the start, and Leo is fated to be betrayed by the adults he idolises.

Dominic Guard in his film debut holds his own against incredibly talented competition. Bates oozes animal magnetism as the swarthily handsome working class farmer who sets Christie's heart a-flutter. She is irresistibly beautiful and it's easy to understand the crush that young Leo develops on both of them. Margaret Leighton and Michael Gough are superb as Marian's totally class conscious parents, and Redgrave deserves a special mention for his performance. It's more of an extended cameo than a part and he doesn't get to speak one word on screen yet he is utterly mesmerizing, conveying more with a look than any words could express.
THE GO-BETWEEN is a film that takes it's time. The story's set in an era where life moved more slowly, especially for the upper classes on their summer holiday, and while it builds to a tragic conclusion there's little sense of urgency. Losey's camera lingers, observing the nuances of life among the well-off in late Victorian England, while Michel Legrand's beautiful score enhances the atmosphere. It all contributes to a haunting quality that will stay with you long after the final credits have rolled.