The Browning Version (1951 film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the 1951 film. For other uses, see The Browning Version (disambiguation).

The Browning Version

Directed by	Anthony Asquith
Produced by	Teddy Baird Earl St. John
Written by	Terence Rattigan
Starring	Michael Redgrave Jean Kent Nigel Patrick
Music by	Arnold Bax Kenneth Essex
Cinematography	Desmond Dickinson
Distributed by	General Film Distr. (UK) Universal Pictures (USA)
Release date(s)	1951
Running time	90 min.
Country	U.K.
Language	English
IMDb profile

The Browning Version is a 1951 British film based on the play of the same name by Terence Rattigan. It is directed by Anthony Asquith.

1 Plot
- 1.1 Differences between play and film
2 Cast
3 Production
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Andrew Crocker-Harris is an ageing Classics teacher at an English private school, and is forced into retirement by his increasing ill health. The film, in common with the original stage play, follows the schoolmaster's final few days in his post, as he comes to terms with his sense of failure as a teacher, a sense of weakness exacerbated by his wife's infidelity and the realisation that he is despised by both pupils and staff of the school.

The emotional turning-point for the cold Crocker-Harris is his pupil Taplow's unexpected parting gift, Robert Browning's translation of the Agamemnon, which he has inscribed with the Greek phrase that translates as "God from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master".

[edit] Differences between play and film

Terence Rattigan wrote the screenplay from his own one-act play. The chief difference is in the film's extended ending. The play ends before Crocker-Harris's farewell speech to the school; the film shows the speech, in which he discards his notes and admits his failings, to be received with warm applause and cheers by the boys. The film ends on a final conversation between Crocker-Harris and Taplow.

Brian Smith as Taplow and
Mich. Redgrave as Crocker-Harris

[edit] Cast

Michael Redgrave played the embittered Andrew Crocker-Harris, a role taken up in the 1994 remake by Albert Finney. Jean Kent plays his wife Millie, and Nigel Patrick plays her lover Frank Hunter, Andrew's fellow schoolmaster who eventually rejects Millie for her cruelty towards her husband, and takes pity on him. A young Ronald Howard plays Gilbert, Crocker-Harris's successor, and Wilfrid Hyde-White plays the Headmaster. Brian Smith plays Taplow. There are also notable uncredited appearances by Bill Travers and Judith Furse.