Stylish look back into an old man's memories, courtesy of Harold Pinter, who wrote the screenplay adaptation of L.P. Hartley's novel. Redgrave reviews his life in painstaking and sometimes dizzying detail under Losey's deft direction. Julie Christie is engaged to Edward Fox, a member of
the British aristocracy, but she is in love with Bates, a lowly farmer. Guard is Redgrave as a young man, hired as the go-between for Christie and Bates. This assignment gives the youth his first taste of love: he falls for Christie too. In fact, he never marries, and we are given to believe it
was this feeling for Christie that kept him a bachelor for seven decades.
Set in Norfolk in the 1900s, the film flashes forward and backward with several twists and such attention to fine shadings that you cannot watch this movie without giving it your utmost attention. The cover for the affair is blown when Christie's mother, Leighton, forces young Guard to take her to
where Christie and Bates are trysting. Several shocking incidents, including Bates shooting himself, keep this film constantly surprising. The ending, in which an aged Christie asks the aged Redgrave to once more act as a go-between, is a smashing climax to a superb film. leave a comment
