Rent The Browning Version (1951)

Classroom drama. - The Browning Version review by Steve

Powerful adaptation by Terence Rattigan of his own one act play about the last few days in post of a pompous, unprosperous classics master in an English public school. The middle aged teacher is forced to evaluate his humiliating marriage and dismal career, and unexpectedly elicits a little hope before the final fadeout.

The overwhelming strength is a showpiece performance by Michael Redgrave. He starts the film as a shuffle of sterile mannerisms, but then gradually colours in the whole of the man, inviting our understanding without resorting much to sentimentality. Jean Kent also excels with her portrayal of his ruthless, unfaithful wife.

Rattigan's script reveals in painful clarity the awful process through which the promising scholar became the inert, complex oppressor of the lower fifth, backfilled with disappointment and forfeiture. He becomes a ghoul who purveys boredom, because that is the only sphere left in which he excels.

It's a brilliant fusion of character and performance. The film also advocates for education as a kind of socialisation rather than the mere passing on of knowledge. Anthony Asquith (like Rattigan) fell out of favour over the next decade. He may not have a critically approved visual signature, but he directed so many classic British films.