The Go-Between (1971 film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Go-Between is a 1970 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by L.P. Hartley. It was directed by Joseph Losey and stars Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, Michael Redgrave, and Edward Fox, among others. The title role was played by Dominic Guard.
The screenplay was written by Harold Pinter, the third of his collaborations with Losey.
Music for the film was composed by Michel Legrand. The movie was shot at Melton Constable in Norfolk.
The film won the 1971 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.
Plot
The story follows a young boy named Leo Colston, who in the year 1900 is a guest of his wealthy school friend, Marcus Maudsley, to spend the summer holidays at his family's Norfolk country house. While there, Marcus is taken sick and quarantined with the measles. Left to entertain himself, Leo befriends Marcus's beautiful elder sister Marian Maudsley, and finds himself a messenger, carrying messages between her and a tenant farmer neighbour, Ted Burgess, with whom she is engaging in a secret illicit affair.
Marian's parents, however, want her to marry Hugh, Viscount Trimingham, the estate owner, who is also courting Marian. A heatwave leading to a thunderstorm coincides with Leo's thirteenth birthday party and the film's climax, when Marian's mother Madeleine forces Leo to take her to Marian, and they find her making love to Burgess in a farm building. This event has a long-lasting impact on Leo after Burgess shoots himself dead in his farmhouse kitchen.
More than fifty years later, Marian, now the Dowager Lady Trimingham, sends for Leo, wanting him to speak to her grandson to assure him that she did truly love Burgess. She asks Leo whether her grandson reminds him of anyone, and he replies "Yes. Ted Burgess".
