A gripping film, and often, thanks to cinematographer Gerry Fisher, also a beautiful one, with several stunning shots of the Norfolk countryside at harvest time.
Harold Pinter's screenplay, in adeptly interweaving present and past, anticipates by some thirty years work by Christopher Nolan (Memento) and by David Hare (The Hours). Pinter and director Losey also succeed in capturing the suffocating English class system.
Having never read L. P. Hartley's story on which the film is based, it's impossible for me to judge the extent of Pinter's faithfulness to it. On film, at least, I feel the finale doesn't quite come off, though I don't really know why. It may be because we don't really get to know the key character (SPOILER: it's Julie Christie's grandson, whom we see but never hear and don't get to know). The more significant revelation of the finale (another SPOILER) is that Michael Redgrave's character has been permanently scarred, emotionally blunted, by his childhood experiences as the message-bearer between Julie Christie's daughter of the manor and Alan Bates' rugged farmer. But, although Redgrave does his very best to suggest this, we have to take it on trust from Julie Christie's character - we never really get to know old Marcus. And of course to have built up any more of his life as an old man would have completely unbalanced the film, so the decision to keep it as oblique as possible was the right one. It just makes the end of the film rather unsatisfactory.
Nevertheless, the story set in the "foreign country" of the past is spectacularly well-told, and magnificently acted, not least by the excellent Dominic Guard as young Marcus - a great screen performance. Bates, Christie, Edward Fox, Michael Gough - all reliably fine.
As you sit watching the film, if you know anything about Margaret Leighton at all, you spend most of it wondering why this Rolls-Royce actress has been cast in what appears to be quite a small part. But then comes the climax of the film, and you realise why she's there. She's magnificent.
It's worth mentioning the obsessive score by Michel Legrand. For many, it won't work. I found it irritating to begin with, but in the end I was won over by it.
Not an unblemished masterpiece, then, but on the whole a compelling work of art.
Harold Pinter's screenplay, in adeptly interweaving present and past, anticipates by some thirty years work by Christopher Nolan (Memento) and by David Hare (The Hours). Pinter and director Losey also succeed in capturing the suffocating English class system.
Having never read L. P. Hartley's story on which the film is based, it's impossible for me to judge the extent of Pinter's faithfulness to it. On film, at least, I feel the finale doesn't quite come off, though I don't really know why. It may be because we don't really get to know the key character (SPOILER: it's Julie Christie's grandson, whom we see but never hear and don't get to know). The more significant revelation of the finale (another SPOILER) is that Michael Redgrave's character has been permanently scarred, emotionally blunted, by his childhood experiences as the message-bearer between Julie Christie's daughter of the manor and Alan Bates' rugged farmer. But, although Redgrave does his very best to suggest this, we have to take it on trust from Julie Christie's character - we never really get to know old Marcus. And of course to have built up any more of his life as an old man would have completely unbalanced the film, so the decision to keep it as oblique as possible was the right one. It just makes the end of the film rather unsatisfactory.
Nevertheless, the story set in the "foreign country" of the past is spectacularly well-told, and magnificently acted, not least by the excellent Dominic Guard as young Marcus - a great screen performance. Bates, Christie, Edward Fox, Michael Gough - all reliably fine.
As you sit watching the film, if you know anything about Margaret Leighton at all, you spend most of it wondering why this Rolls-Royce actress has been cast in what appears to be quite a small part. But then comes the climax of the film, and you realise why she's there. She's magnificent.
It's worth mentioning the obsessive score by Michel Legrand. For many, it won't work. I found it irritating to begin with, but in the end I was won over by it.
Not an unblemished masterpiece, then, but on the whole a compelling work of art.