The Browning Version

Beautiful, Powerful, Heart-Rending, Delicate, Deft!
Terence Rattigan's screenplay for "The Browning Version" expands and greatly improves his short stage play of the same name. The title refers to a translation by the poet, Robert Browning, of "Agamemnon," a classical Greek tragedy. The film's protagonist, Andrew Crocker-Harris, an English private school teacher brilliantly played by Michael Redgrave, once wrote a translation of "Agamemnon," and has been trying for years to teach 14-year-old boys to read the Greek original. Because of poor health and general dissatisfaction with his performance, he has resigned his position.

In the tragedy, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife, aided by her lover. In the film, Crocker-Harris is spiritually dead, partly from spousal "murder," although the slaughter has been reciprocal, and his wife, Millie, is in worse shape than he. In tragedies, the hero starts out happy and becomes miserable. In this film, full of the sadness of professional and domestic failure, Crocker-Harris moves away from...

Perhaps the finest movie I have ever seen -- a true classic
I watched this movie many years ago on PBS simply by chance. I have since acquired my own copy and have watched it many times. The story and characters have remained with me ever since. Michael Redgrave gives a performance that is, quite simply, stunning. Redgrave plays an aging and depressed schoolmaster at an English boarding school who, despite a promising start as a teacher many years before, has now failed as a teacher and as a husband. His wife is a nightmare -- conniving, duplicitous and unfaithful. His tolerance of her maliciousness, and of his own failings, is touchingly played out in one heartrending scene after another. Into this malaise comes a young student who, unlike his fellow students, recognizes the brilliance and potential of the old schoolmaster. When he gives the old man the present of a book of poems by Browning, it reawakens a long lost spirit. If you see no other movie, see this one -- please. You'll never forget it. I never will.

Probably Redgrave's Greatest Screen Performance
In a classroom of a British public school modeled on Harrow, students are waiting for their classics master, Andrew Crocker-Harris. "I don't think the Crock gets a kick out of anything," says Taplow, one of the students. "In fact, I don't think he has any feelings at all. He's just dead, that's all...He can't hate people and he can't like people. And what's more, he doesn't like people to like him. If he'd give me a chance, I think I'd quite like him." "What"" says another student. "Well, I feel sorry for him, which is more or less the same thing, isn't it?"

Crocker-Harris (Michael Redgrave) is a middle-aged teacher, pedantic, precise, not so much dead inside as numb. He has taught 18 years at the school as the lower fifth classics master. He was once a brilliant scholar and could see a wonderful career as a teacher. His wife, Millie (Jean Kent), has become a shrew. She had her ambitions, too, and they eroded in the face of the couple's incompatibility. Millie longs for...

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