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The Go-Between [VHS] [1970]
 
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The Go-Between [VHS] [1970]

VHS ~ Julie Christie
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Writer Harold Pinter and director Joseph Losey always hoped to make an adaptation of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Their version of L.P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between offers tantalising hints as to how the Proust film might have turned out. An old man (Michael Redgrave) thinks back to a summer many years before when, as a young boy, he stayed with the aristocratic Maudsley family in their beautiful house in the Norfolk countryside. On the threshold of adolescence, intensely curious about sex, he became the go-between for Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie) and local farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates) as they conducted an affair behind the backs of the Maudsley family.

This is a slow-moving but beguiling story of lost innocence. There's a subtlety and intelligence here rarely found in British costume dramas. The filmmakers go to enormous lengths to recreate Edwardian England, but never allow the period detail to stifle the storytelling. Although life with the Maudsleys seems idyllic--an endless round of picnics, cricket matches and parties--there is always an undercurrent of violence. The Maudsleys are inveterate snobs. The terrifying Mrs Maudsley (played by Margaret Leighton) simply can't countenance the idea that her daughter would have an affair with a man so far beneath her on the social scale as Burgess. The little boy carries the messages between the lovers without ever quite understanding how explosive their contents are. --Geoffrey Macnab



Synopsis

The delicate story of a young boy's adoration for a beautiful young woman, and of his involvement in her love affair with one of her father's tenant farmers. Based on the novel by L.P. Hartley.

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The aspect ratio, 13 Aug 2007
This review is from: The Go-Between [DVD] [1970] (DVD)
Yes, it is a pity that the movie is not presented in its intended theatrical aspect ratio 1.85. But to make it clear it is not presented in "butchered 1.33 to fit conventional TV screens" or a "TV-friendly crop of the original wide-screen movie" either. The movie is presented in its original open matte format, which means it was shot in conventional 1.33 to fit TV screens. For theatrical release the picture was then cropped at the top and the bottom, a common practice since the Fifties. So the picture is nothing missing here as the other reviewers suggest. Instead, it shows more information at the top and the bottom than the theatrical release. Just for the record.
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56 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars 5 star film, 1 star DVD , 2 Feb 2007
This review is from: The Go-Between [DVD] [1970] (DVD)
This is a superb film, unfolding at a moodily languid pace and portraying the injustice of the class system in British society with far more subtlety than most period films. It is a film for intelligent viewers who can appreciate the accumulation of hints and nuances that support this through line. Alan Bates is superb, and Julie Christie is also very well cast. Though he only appears at the end, Michael Redgrave is mesmeric as the haunted bachelor asked to once more walk into the trauma of his youth. This youth involved carrying illicit notes between a young aristocratic single woman (Christie) and a tenant farmer on her family's land (Bates). The interplay of these characters is fascinating, owing much to Joseph Losey's restrained elegant direction and Harold Pinter's taut screenplay. Though I have not read the L.P. Hartley novel on which this is based, I am now very much encouraged to do so.

Unfortunately, though the back of the DVD case claims that the aspect ratio is 1.85, the film is presented in a butchered 1.33 to fit conventional TV screens. Hopefully a more meticulous release will come out at some stage, as the film really is a masterpiece that deserves to be seen as originally intended and shot.
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28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A timeless classic, 19 Sep 2001
Harold Pinter wasn't know for his screenplays, but with this script, he brought forward all of his legendary expertise to give us one of cinema's most stunning costume dramas in british film history. This is a film you will want to see again and again, and if you do, you'll see something fresh each time.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Losey at his best
"The Servant" is Pinter served up (well) by Losey, "Accident" is Losey and Pinter proving how boring they can be, but "The Go-Between" brings out the best of both. Read more
Published 7 months ago by S. Graham David

1.0 out of 5 stars Great film...poor transfer
I was so looking forward to the release on DVD of this great film. However, the lazy use of the cropped tv version as opposed to a faithful remaster of the original beautifully... Read more
Published on 8 Jul 2007 by pjic

3.0 out of 5 stars Strange passage to DVD
This film first appeared on DVD last year, when it was included as a freebie inside an edition of the Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail. Read more
Published on 5 Jul 2007 by Gavin Wilson

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