I may have been a brilliant scholar but I was woefully ignorant of the facts of life.So what exactly was weighing on the conscience of creative minds in 1951? Our series shifts from the repressed spiritual torments of a lonely celibate young clergyman in rural France (Diary of a Country Priest) to a lonely celibate middle aged scholar in urban England (The Browning Version.) Two gifted and sensitive men, mired in mediocrity and the inevitable decay of life, struggling to reconcile their ideals with the obvious failure of their efforts to meaningfully impact the lives of those around them. There have been (and I suspect will be) times in my life where I can relate directly to what the Priest of Ambricourt and Mr. Andrew Crocker-Harris struggle with in their respective ordeals - though my aim is to learn from their examples and find a way to strike happier notes as I go through my life's journey.
The Browning Version is one of those films that seems, at first glance, relatively easy to skim past as I make this trek through the Criterion Collection. On its surface, it presents as an unassuming, slightly stuffy melodrama about a schoolmaster enduring a critical midlife crisis of the old-fashioned sort - not a belated return to adolescence, as the term "midlife crisis" is commonly applied these days, immortalized in a film like American Beauty and actualized in the sad extramarital eruptions of personalities as dissimilar as Jon Gosselin and Tiger Woods. Instead of today's vulgar flourishes of self-indulgence, respectable gentlemen of mid-century England labored under the clear social expectation to endure their misery with quiet, manly dignity, subsuming themselves in something larger than themselves, whether it be the Church, the Academy or some other revered institution (business, government, the military, etc.) The price paid in terms of repression and psychic/spiritual torments might be acknowledged but was seldom called into question, it seems - it was just part of the same wretched ordeal that everyone had to face sooner or later. And in the meantime, let's milk the drama for all that it's worth.
Thus it was that playwright Terence Rattigan was led to compose this straightforward one-act stageplay about Andrew Crocker-Harris, a former prodigy in the field of classical studies who somehow got mired in a going-nowhere career as a teacher in a venerable British public school (which in American terms, means private school) - one of those ancient old-stone places dating back to the Middle Ages where the sons of prosperous families were sent to be molded into proper citizens. "The Crock," as he's commonly referred to (out of his earshot, of course) by his students, has reached a low point after 18 years at the school, in the same position he started at, teaching Greek and Latin to boys in the Lower Fifth (roughly, junior year of American high school.) The action (and I use that term loosely here) opens as we're learning that it's the final day at the school for Crocker-Harris. He's retiring due to poor health and, following doctor's orders, will soon take a less-strenuous (and more humiliating) assignment at a school for "backward boys." Given the length of his tenure, there's a noted lack of sentiment accompanying his imminent departure, and he only has himself to blame, since he presents an impenetrable facade of formality and utter lack of warmth for the young men he instructs. Compounding his problems is the dismal, unhappy state of his marriage to Millicent, admired by others for her beauty and social fluency, pitied for her sad allegiance to such a cold fish and held in mild scorn by those who are aware of her increasingly obvious infidelity to her husband.
But why should I go on describing all this when you can watch this clip (sorry, "embedding disabled by request" so right-click, watch it in a new tab or window, and come back here after you've gotten the gist of it!) If that exhortation is still not sufficient to move you to view the clip, let me just say that Michael Redgrave's acting is phenomenally effective here in capturing the essence of the petty-aggressive scholastic tyrant who shows no reluctance whatsoever in shaming or ridiculing his students simply to amuse himself and demonstrate his intellectual superiority. Perhaps such teachers convince themselves that dressing-down their pupils provides some kind of motivation for young scholars to apply themselves more diligently, but their belief just goes to show how deluded and cut off they are from the way young minds work.
OK, trusting that you watched the clip, a few comments. The gentleman in the back of the room is the teacher assigned to take over the Crock's classroom. The "amended aphorism" is scientia est calare scientiam, a twist on the saying ars est celare artem (the art is in concealing the art), so the joke is that "the knowledge is in concealing the knowledge." That dialog at the end of the clip pertaining to the play Agamemnon by the ancient Greek writer Aeschylus directly informs the plot of The Browning Version. I've already mentioned Millicent Crocker-Harris' reputation for infidelity and we see the object of her dalliance in the jaunty, vibrant science teacher Frank Hunter. (So yes, we have the Crock and we have the Hunter, supply your own jokes or draw the appropriate analogies if you feel so inspired...) What we don't see is Millie herself, and she's not going to be featured prominently in the other clips I post here, so this picture will have to do:
Hopefully you can see in the cold glare of her leveled gaze a telling indicator of just how low her opinion of her husband has sunk. The two share a few scenes that seemed a bit soapy and melodramatic upon first viewing but now after seeing the story play itself out now pack a heftier punch. As a 25-year survivor of marriage myself, I know that look and the kinds of disappointment a spouse can provoke to generate the expression. I can't say that Jean Kent did an especially brilliant job portraying a woman trapped by her circumstances and lashing out however she thinks she might get away with it, but a closer examination of her character made Millicent more sympathetic than initial impressions might convey. The movies focus, rightly, remains on Redgrave as Mr. Crocker-Harris, in that "man's world" sort of way that seems quite fitting for a British "film of quality" from this period. The issues, dilemmas and tensions of the storyline all revolve around the kinds of concerns that men in their 40s are likely to have as they approach middle age, conscious that there's not enough time to significantly turn a career around but still quite a ways to go before they can gracefully settle into a graceful elderly repose. Crocker-Harris, with his health failing, his job and social role uprooting and no prospects for comfort or consolation from the wife who relentlessly belittles him, can no longer shield himself from the truth that he's a complete failure. And that, my friends, is a horrible prospect to contemplate when one gets to be a certain age! But even should one find that reality staring them in the mirror one morning, The Browning Version offers just a glimmer of hope (but no more than that, since the film remains grounded in realism) that a way out of the dilemma may yet be found.
Young Taplow, the sympathetic schoolboy who meets with the Crock for noontime tutoring sessions, plays a pivotal role in helping his teacher unwittingly, unexpectedly discover that new possibility. In a scene following the clip above, they get into a conversation about Agamemnon and just how thrilling Taplow found it to be when he got into the story itself. The exchange triggers the Crock's memory about an early effort of his, translating the play into vibrant, expressive couplets, back when he felt genuine enthusiasm about the classics and a desire to share that passion with the world. The domino effect of memories and associations does its work and before too long, the old teacher is reconnected with that long-neglected, never completed notebook containing his translation, which in turn leads to a new chain of recollections and realizations:
It's a powerful scene, I suspect, for men who've gone through their own periods of self-examination and assessment and not felt good about what they saw. We get the impression that Crocker-Harris has worked very hard over the years to avoid having to face such a moment, and that only now has he run out of diversions that forestall his having to look failure square in the face. As the story develops, we learn more about what's gone on in his marriage and just how much rationalizing he needs to do just to keep his wits about him and function on a daily basis. What first struck me as a fairly routine depiction of an emotionally constipated curmudgeon has grown in my esteem as my familiarity with the character of Crocker-Harris deepened. I may have been a bit tired when I first watched The Browning Version, or perhaps just over-saturated with movie watching that day, but close, careful attention to the nuances of Redgrave's performance, Ratigan's writing and director Anthony Asquith's sharp, tasteful framings deepens my admiration of what they put forth as a substantial critique of the cultural forces that clearly crushed many fine men of that era, and continue to do so today.
Having mentioned the three most prominent artistic forces behind this film just now, I think it's also fitting to take a moment to mention a common burden they all had to bear at this time. Ratigan and Asquith lived as basically closeted homosexuals, risking prison time and hard labor if their "transgressions" were brought into a court of law, while Redgrave described himself as bisexual, which surely must have created enough complications in his own marriage and family life to inform his portrayal of a man alienated and apparently mismatched with his wife. The commentary by Bruce Eder examines the ways this film's treatment of the "two kinds of love" (presumably, intellectual and erotic) mentioned by Crocker-Harris as he grapples with the strains between himself and Millicent serve as a veiled reference to Ratigan's critique of the presumptive heterosexual norms of British social mores and his contemporaries' unwillingness to allow him and other gay citizens live in open acknowledgement of their sexual orientation. Because candid expression of these views virtually guaranteed censorship and criminal prosecution, Ratigan, Asquith and many others had to carefully watch their steps and "paraphrase" their views, so to speak. I don't think it's necessary to view the film as some kind of coded reference, but it clearly does open up new possibilities of application for its core message. However, as a 48 year old hetero married guy, I found the surface-level reading of a complicated marriage and the inability to sufficiently address and resolve long-standing tensions plenty enough informative and indicative of what can happen over the course of a long monogamous relationship to suit my own purposes!
Since I've already carried you a fair stretch of the way through the arc of the story, I'll continue on here with two more clips that could perhaps serve as spoilers, though that's not at all my intention. This scene delivers the film's critical breaking point, a powerful emotional eruption so out of character with the Crocker-Harris we've come to know that it leaves an attentive viewer somewhat short of breath. Here is where we learn why the play and film were given the title The Browning Version:
If you really want to complete the cycle, you can easily find the clip of Crocker-Harris' final speech to the students on YouTube, but I'll refrain from posting it here. You already have a generous sampling, which will either satisfy your curiosity, has already left you bored, or persuaded you to go out and find the film for yourself so you can explore at length the deeper nuances of dialogue, acting and cinematography that make (in my opinion) The Browning Version a worthwhile choice for anyone seeking to wisely and authentically navigate the perils that come with living into one's fourth decade of life, regardless of vocation or domestic relationship.
Next: The Tales of Hoffman