The Go-Between – 1971 | 118mins | Drama | Colour

Plot Synopsis

L.P. Hartley’s novel of doomed love and class distinction as adapted by Harold Pinter: the strength of the film is less in the drama than the perfect evocation of time, place, and social milieu.

Pre-Great War rural Norfolk, this story of unrequited love defying class structure is told in flashbacks by an old man, Leo Colston (Michael Redgrave). Beautiful aristocrat Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie) is engaged to marry wealthy socialite Hugh Trimingham (Edward Fox), but she loves lowly farmer Ted Burgess (Alan Bates) instead. Young Leo (Dominic Guard), is the boy holidaying at the lavish country house of a school friend, who unwitting becomes hired to act as messenger between Marian and Ted during a clammy summer, and is marked for life by the experience. The young boy falls for Marian, and we are led to believe it was this desire and romantic disillusionment that kept him a bachelor for seven decades. The affair is exposed when Marian’s mother forces the young Leo to take her to where the illicit lovers are meeting.