The Browning Version

Andrew Crocker-Harris has been forced from his position as the classics master at an English public school due to poor health. As he winds up his final term, he discovers not only that his wife, Millie, has been unfaithful to him with one of his fellow schoolmasters, but that the school's students and faculty have long disdained him. However, an unexpected act of kindness causes Crocker-Harris to re-evaluate his life's work.

In despicable literary characters such as Ebenezer Scrooge, and here, Michael Redgrave's Andrew Crocker-Harris, it is necessary--perhaps even more so now than ever before--to see the triumph of the human spirit and the soul-cleansing power of redemption and forgiveness (both in others and of ourselves). This is the quintessential document of such a human transformation.

There's a little bit of the "Mr Chips" story in this adaptation of Terence Rattigan's story of life in a once proud English public school. "Crocker-Harris" (Michael Redgrave) has rather stoically and unsympathetically been trying to drum Greek into his classes of largely disinterested buys for many years, but is now to move on after becoming ill. What's fairly clear from the outset is that his wife "Millie" (an on-form Jean Kent) has little but disdain for her rather pedestrian husband, and that she has been a little too friendly with his slightly smarmy colleague "Hunter" (Nigel Patrick). As the day of his departure looms ever closer, the teacher finds himself beginning to bond with the bright and refreshingly honest young "Taplow" (Brian Smith) who seems not only interested in his Aristotle, but also in this now rather dejected purveyor of education. It's also fairly obvious that none of his professional colleagues are particularly sympathetic to him either - a fact ably demonstrated by the lack of sympathy to their impending financial predicament offered by headmaster "Frobisher" (Wilfred Hyde-White). Redgrave gives a strong and nuanced performance here. His character has been aimlessly cruising for so long, he has forgotten how to live or what he, himself, wanted when he was the age of the young man who is now provoking a long-abandoned sense of worth in the man. His realisation of his domestic predicament, and of the rather shrewishness of his wife, is also effectively banging his head against a wall and wakening him up to a state of affairs of which he was probably aware, but maybe just didn't really care. I can't say I loved the conclusion - perhaps all just a little too much of a volte face from just about everyone, but it's an interesting character study with the odd bit of humour and a strong story.