joseph Losey's The Go-Between 1971

 Losey's film of L.P. Hartley's novel (which I wrote about earlier this month) has an effectively sparse and elegant screenplay by Harold Pinter, who also wrote Losey's Accident (1967) and The Servant (1963).  None of the important scenes from the novel are omitted, with Losey beautifully capturing "the wind in the trees" (to use D.W. Griffith's term) in Norfolk, England in the summer of 1900 (cinematography by Gerry Fisher)  I was impressed with the cast of Julie Christie as Marian, Alan Bates as Ted Burgess and Dominic Guard as young Leo Colston.  Hartley's novel is written in the first person by the older Leo Colston and Losey intercuts scenes of the older Leo (Michael Redgrave) on his way to re-connect with the older Marian, an effective correlative to the novel's first person narrative of the past.

Losey was American, chased out of America during the McCarthy years after making a number of excellent genre films, especially The Prowler (1951), and settled in England, resuming his career with a number of low-budget films.  His view of the English class system, as it was in 1900 and continued to be, was precise and accurate, especially in his films with Pinter.  Twelve-year-old Leo was from the middle class and enjoyed his summer with his mate Marcus (Richard Gibson) of the aristocratic Maudsley family, until he was given the task of bringing secret messages between Marian and farmer Ted Burgess and can't understand why Marian is engaged to Lord Timingham (Edward Fox) instead of marrying Burgess. The clash of classes ends in disaster for the Maudsleys as well as for Leo and Burgess.