This is a beautifully filmed piece of cinema in which the real "stars" are time and place. The plot, such as it is, is rather thin and drawn out, whilst characterisation is sketchy and insubstantial. There is a sense that such sketchiness is deliberate and justified in order to capture those distances which exist between childhood and the adult world, between one class and another and, of course, the sexes. Alan Bates' farmer Ted Burgess is given no depth beyond that of horny rustic, whilst Julie Christie as Marian wears her dresses well without once betraying any real hint of what she feels beneath her corset. This emotionless quality which hangs over the drama as heavily as the Norfolk heat in which it takes place is nowhere as perfectly captured as in the smoking room scene in which Hugh (Edward Fox) and the head of the household Mr Maudsley( Michael Gough) communicate over the head of Leo, wonderfully played by Dominic Court, with looks and pauses and words whose deeper meanings the young boy can only come to understand when he is older and able to look back on the events of that summer as an adult. No review of this film would be complete without a mention of Margaret Leighton's commanding performance as the powerful, class obsessed matriarch, Mrs Maudsley who, ultimately, is forced to cut through the knowing acceptance of the males, and bring the relationship between Marian and Ted to an end, at the same time, unwittingly bringing Leo face to face with the disturbing truth of what goes on between men and women in the world of adults.
Review of The Go-Between
